


The Art of Falling

by zipegs



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bittersweet Ending, Body Horror, Canon-Typical Violence, Castiel (Supernatural) Has Mental Health Issues, Dean/Cas Reverse Bang, Domestic Fluff, Fallen Angel Castiel (Supernatural), Hopeful Ending, Hurt Castiel (Supernatural), Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Newly Human Castiel (Supernatural), Slow Burn, Solo Hunter Dean Winchester, Strangers to Lovers, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Temporary Character Death, graphic descriptions of wounds and their acquisition, mentions of deceased characters, sam and most other people close to dean are dead, some thoughts and post-coital regret that can read like internalized homophobia, sprinklings of, very temporary and ambiguous
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-03
Updated: 2019-06-03
Packaged: 2020-04-07 09:58:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 39,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19082722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zipegs/pseuds/zipegs
Summary: What darkness befalls an angel when the world they knew is ripped away?After being cast out of Heaven, Castiel wakes up in rural Nebraska injured, alone, and overwhelmed. Out of options, he begrudgingly accepts the aid of the hunter who finds him and holes up in a dingy little mobile home while his newly fragile body does its best to heal. But life as a human is harder to endure than Castiel expected, and despite Dean’s constant kindness, he finds himself struggling to reconcile what he was with what he is becoming.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> It’s been such a privilege working with the lovely [Bees](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeesAreAwesome/pseuds/BeesAreAwesome) on this! Collaborating with her has been a dream; I couldn’t have asked for a better partner. Her art is embedded in this fic, but please go check it out on [tumblr](https://bees0are0awesome.tumblr.com/post/185335268430/artwork-masterpost-for-the-art-of-falling) and [AO3](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19076581) and send her some love! Credit also goes to her for the first line of the summary, which was her initial prompt. Bees, I’m so grateful to have had the chance to work with you, and thank you for everything! This fic wouldn’t be what it is without you.
> 
> A big thank you also to my incredible betas, [kitmistry](https://kitmistry.tumblr.com/), [captainhaterade](https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainhaterade), and [kazshero](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kazshero/pseuds/kazshero), whose input and feedback were invaluable.

 

There are no words to encompass this pain. It’s consuming him, atom by atom, molecule by molecule; he is being flayed. Flames sear at his skin—they lick their way outside of him, vacating their confines to claw at muscle and sinew. The inferno builds and builds, a blazing wave which never crests. He can feel his bones charring, his flesh shriveling and peeling away from his face, his hands.

 

Something rips from his back, wet and sharp. The pain is excruciating; he has known nothing like this, no suffering that can begin to compare. His body contorts in agony.

 

He is falling. The flames burn hotter as he gathers speed; the wind claws at what’s left of his wings; stripping feather from flesh, snapping bones like twigs. There is another wet rip, another eternal moment of unrelenting agony.

 

He shouts into the blackness, his voice swallowed by the high scream of his Grace.

 

Then, mercifully, there is nothing.

 

  
  



	2. Part I

Castiel snaps back to consciousness as agony rips its way through his body. His back is being torn apart—something has sliced into the place where his wings meet flesh and poured flame into the wound which it has split open. For a moment, his voice snags in his throat, and then he screams.

 

He’s writhing, muscles convulsing in search of relief that does not come.

 

There are hands on him, then, broad and calloused, but Castiel’s mind is snared by throbbing pain, and he cannot focus. Wide eyes stare down at him. The man’s lips are moving. His hands slide around to Castiel’s back, and something white ignites within him.

 

He passes out.

 

 

When he comes to this time, it’s slower—clearer. Pain is still pulsating through every millimeter of his being, but the tattered remnants of his Grace have swallowed its edge. It’s excruciating, but bearable.

 

A breath shudders out of him; something wet rattles in his lungs, and he coughs. The movement is startling, both for Castiel and for the man currently pressing down on his back. His pressure falters for a moment, and when he resumes it, Castiel cries out, stars exploding behind his eyes. Something shifts under the man’s hand, something hard and _sharp_ that Castiel feels scrape jaggedly at the meat of his back. His stomach clenches, and he squeezes his eyes shut.

 

Desperately, he attempts to collect his thoughts, but pain is thick inside his skull, and it’s difficult to concentrate. He doesn’t know where he is; it’s dark, and something is wrong with his eyes. Everything is muted and grey, edges hazy and indistinct. He pushes his head up from the ground, and tall grass scratches at his face, but still, he can only make out a few feet in front of him.

 

_He shouts into the blackness, his voice swallowed by the high scream of his Grace._

 

The memory slams into him. He feels the wind lashing his skin, the white-hot burn of his Grace. The rip and crack of flesh and bone tearing away. Panic claws at his throat; he shoves himself up onto his hands and knees. Above him, the man’s hands fall away—he yells something, but Castiel isn’t paying attention, too busy trying to keep the world from pitching and rolling around him. Terror settles into his bones.

 

He flexes his wings.

 

Agony slices deep into his back; the thing beneath his skin shifts and scrapes again. _His wings_. As his horror mounts, so does his nausea. Castiel turns his heads and vomits.

 

“Hey, hey!” There are gentle hands on his shoulders, guiding him to sit. “Take it easy; that’s right. You’re okay.” The words are lost on Castiel. Dumbly, he reaches a trembling hand around to his back, fingertips hovering over the nothingness behind him. He presses them to his flesh, feels something jagged and wet. At the touch, pain ignites within him again. His breath snaps; he feels faint.

 

A hand shoots out, wrapping around his wrist and drawing it away from his back. “Whoa, whoa, hey, don’t do that!” the voice is urging. Castiel drags his focus to it, but his eyes still aren’t cooperating. He can make out cropped hair, a sturdy figure, the silhouette of a heavy jacket. “You gotta— you gotta lay back down, man. You’re gonna bleed out if I don’t keep pressure on those wounds.”

 

“I’m fine,” Castiel lies. Speaking feels like ingesting glass. He swallows—it doesn’t help.

 

“Yeah, sure you are, buddy.” The man is pushing gently at his shoulders, trying to get him to prostrate himself again.

 

_“Hold him down.”_

 

_Strong hands press his shoulders down, keeping him pinned to the chair. He kicks out, but it does no good. Fear is pushing the air out of his lungs._

 

_“Stop fighting, Castiel. You’re making this more difficult than it needs to be.”_

 

Castiel rips the man’s hands off him, scrambling to stand upright. But balancing is different without his wings, and he overcompensates, listing forward. He staggers, legs shaking beneath him, and attempts to extract himself from the memories that gleam white and sterile just behind his eyes. He’s not in Naomi’s office, and those hands don’t belong to Uriel or Raphael or Michael. He’s here. Wherever here is.

 

“—hear me?”

 

The man’s voice washes over him, the tail end of some sentence that slips out of Castiel’s grasp, and then the man is standing before him, palms raised in reassurance. Their eyes meet, and his mouth twists up at the corner.

 

“Yeah, that’s right. I’m not gonna hurt ya.” It isn’t entirely reassuring, but Castiel’s legs are quivering like a newborn foal’s, and he barely has the energy to keep himself upright. “It, uh. Looks like the bleeding’s stopped,” the man continues, edging closer to him one slow step at a time. “Which is… fucking weird, but I’m gonna take a wild guess and say you got somethin’ a little stronger’n human blood in those veins.”

 

“It’s my Grace,” Castiel replies, weariness permitting his words to flow without restraint. He reaches for it within his chest, but there is no pulse of energy there, just the sizzling afterimage of what he once was. “Or what’s left of it.”

 

“Your…” The man is frowning at him; moonlight glints off the furrow of his brow, and deep shadows are cast by the lines that mar his forehead.

 

“My Grace.” He doesn’t attempt to explain, instead casting his eyes out across the field. His sight hasn’t improved, but he’s got a creeping feeling that this is simply what it will be, now. That this is simply all human eyes are capable of beholding. “Where are we?”

 

“Nebraska.” Castiel can feel the man’s gaze on him, even if he cannot see it. “You wanna tell me what the hell you’re doing out here, injured, in the middle of the night, completely fucking naked?”

 

“What are _you_ doing out here?”

 

“Hunting,” the man says without pause. “I was just heading back from ganking a couple demons when I caught sight of something like a supernova torpedo-ing its way outta the sky and into the ground. So I followed it.” The man raises his eyebrows. “Your turn.”

 

Castiel looks over at him, assessing. He’s staring back unapologetically, mouth set into a thin line. Castiel doesn’t blame him; he would not trust himself either. He looks away.

 

“I fell.”

 

“You— what?”

 

“I _fell_.” He doesn’t have the energy for this. Irritation is burrowing under his skin; he’s tired, and he aches, and more than anything he just wants to go home. But that isn’t an option anymore, and it never will be. The thought tightens in his chest.

 

“Like… out of a tree?”

 

A scoff carves its way out of Castiel’s throat. His gaze snaps back to the man, eyes narrowed in disbelief. The man raises his hands again, wincing. “Okay, okay, sorry! Just tryna understand here.”

 

“I fell,” Castiel tries again, low and deliberate, “from _Heaven_.”

 

Silence. A moment passes; the only sounds Castiel can hear are the brush of the wind over the grass, the throbbing of his head, the pound of blood in his veins. It could be a moment or an hour, but eventually, the man recovers from his shock and closes his mouth.

 

“No. No friggin’ way. You’re joking.” Castiel doesn’t dignify that with a response. The wounds in his back tell the story themselves, red and angry as they are. He begins to walk away. “No, wait— Where are you going?!”

 

The man scrambles after him. He catches up quickly; Castiel is unsteady and slow, and he doesn’t make it far. “You can’t just drop something like that and walk away. Hey!” He’s positioned himself in front of Castiel, one hand reached out to press against his chest in an attempt to hold him off. Castiel doesn’t stop; the man walks backward, matching his pace. “You’re really an angel?”

 

Castiel glares. The man winces. “Or, uh… you really _were_ an angel?” Still, he doesn’t respond; walking is becoming increasingly taxing. He keeps listing forward to account for his wings, and each step jars his back, his head. “Look, I’m sorry, it’s just a little hard to believe is all. Last time anyone claimed they saw an angel this side of Heaven was like… 300 years ago, so sue me for bein’ a little suspicious. I mean, at this point, it’s just urban legend, or wishful thinking, or whatever the hell you wanna call it.”

 

“I assure you, they’re entirely real,” Castiel grits out from between clenched teeth, and he focuses his gaze on a point over the man’s shoulder. The world has begun to spin; he fights to keep the ground under his feet.

 

“I don’t know, buddy; seems a little— whoa!” Castiel’s knee gives out and he stumbles, but the man is quick to react, bracing his weight and keeping him upright. Castiel’s hands fly out, one fisting in the front of the stranger’s jacket and the other wrapping around his shoulder.

 

“You okay?” he asks as he helps Castiel find his balance once more. He seems reluctant to release him, perhaps in fear that Castiel might falter again. To tell the truth, he’s not so sure he won’t.

 

“Yes. Thank you…” He looks up at the man, whose features are etched with what Castiel assumes to be concern.

 

“Dean,” he supplies, an answer to a question Castiel didn’t know he’d asked.

 

“Dean.” The name melts on his tongue. Dean is looking down at him, expectant. When a moment passes in silence, he raises his eyebrows.

 

Castiel realizes he is being asked to reciprocate. “I am Castiel.”

 

“Cass-tee-el?” Dean makes a face. “O-kay. Mind telling me where the hell you think you’re going, _Castiel_?”

 

Dread presses down on his chest; he doesn’t know. He has nowhere to go, no one to call. “I can’t stay here,” he says, feeling the truth of it in the tired scratch of his eyes. This is exhaustion, he thinks—the human kind. In addition to the searing pain still pulsing through him, his limbs feel heavy, as though they mean to drag him down to the earth and keep him there.

 

“Yeah, no shit.” Dean is observing him carefully now. After a moment, he huffs out a breath. He shrugs out of his jacket, offering it with raised brows and an expression Castiel cannot quite place. After a moment, he shakes it. “Take it.”

 

Castiel squints. Dean rolls his eyes and steps forward, draping the jacket around Castiel’s shoulders. The leather drags at the place where his wings were and he chokes, pain exploding behind his eyes. But Dean doesn’t seem to notice; he puts an arm around Castiel’s shoulders, the other wrapping around his bicep, and shepherds him back the way they came. Castiel wants to protest, but he is tired and humbled and aching, and Dean is strong, his jacket warm.

 

“Look,” Dean is saying, “Right now, I trust you about as far as I can throw you.” An odd saying, Castiel thinks detachedly. “But if you really _are_ an angel— I mean, uh, if, uh… if you really _were_ an angel—”

 

It’s a valid point. He isn’t an angel anymore, not really. Without his Grace and his wings, he’s broken. Diminished. But if he isn’t an angel, what is he?

 

“—my mom would kill me if I left you high and dry, so.” They come to a stop at the spot where Castiel fell. Dean bends and picks up a flashlight and what appears to be a bloodied shirt. “Consider yourself booked for Hotel Winchester, free of charge.” He stands and turns to face Castiel, eyebrows raised expectantly.

 

Castiel doesn’t understand.

 

After a moment, Dean’s face falls. He rolls his eyes. “My place. I’m gonna take you home, nurse you to health, all that jazz.”

 

“Why would you do that?”

 

Dean cocks an eyebrow. “Helping people? It’s kinda my thing. ‘Sides, like I said; my mom had a soft spot for your kind. She was always convinced you guys were real—used to tell us angels were watching over us from the time we were kids. If she knew I passed up the opportunity to get to know a real live angel, or worse: left him to bleed out in the middle of bumfuck, Nebraska? She’d kick my ass.” The corner of his mouth tugs up slightly, but Castiel still wavers.

 

He watches Dean warily. He does not know this man, no matter how kind he appears. He is reasonably convinced that Dean is human—even without his Grace, Castiel thinks he would be able to sense if he weren’t—but he has no way to see into his soul, to read his intentions. Castiel frowns, and he narrows his brows, focusing on seeing _through_ Dean. If he could just get a glimpse, or perhaps a look at his existence in other dimensions…

 

But nothing comes to him except nausea. A gut-wrenching wave of loss passes through him, and he needs to close his eyes for a moment against it. Dean’s hand is on him again, gentle and cautious.

 

“Hey. You alright?”

 

Castiel opens his eyes. “Fine.” With nothing to trust but his five human senses, dull and imperfect, there is no way to be sure of Dean’s intentions. But he can admit that without Dean’s help, he is not sure how he will fare. Besides, angel or not, he can fend for himself. “Where is your home?”

 

Dean exerts light pressure on his shoulder, urging him to continue walking. In the near distance, Castiel can make out a road, a dark shape pulled off onto the shoulder. “It’s about an hour west of here,” Dean says.

 

When they reach the shape—a car, Castiel finds, black and sleek—Dean pops open the trunk and tosses the shirt and flashlight in. Castiel stands off to the side, uncertain, as he rifles around for a few moments. When he emerges, he’s clutching a threadbare blanket and a small plastic bottle. He shakes the bottle and then tosses it to Castiel, who fumbles but manages to clasp it against his chest.

 

“Painkillers,” he explains, slamming the lid of the trunk down. “Lemme just—” He crosses to the front, pulling open the driver’s side door, and leans in. After a moment, he appears with a half-empty water bottle, which he also passes over. “Here. You probably need this more than I do.”

 

Castiel fumbles the cap off and takes a sip. It’s… incredible. He gulps down another few mouthfuls, and then Dean is pushing his hand away gently. “Easy there. Save some of it for the pills.” Castiel frowns but obeys, setting the water down on the roof of the car to twist off the pill bottle’s top. It proves more difficult than he’d expected; it clicks and clicks but doesn’t seem to loosen.

 

Dean plucks it from his hands. “Here,” he says, twisting the cap off in one smooth motion. “It’s childproof; you gotta push down.” He shakes out two pills onto Castiel’s open hand, and the corner of his mouth draws up into an amused smile. “Man, you really aren’t from around here, are you?”

 

Castiel glares, popping the pills into his mouth and chasing them with a long pull of the water. “I already told you,” he grouses irritably. Dean shakes his head. He pulls open the door to the backseat and gestures for Castiel to get in.

 

“I’d let you ride shotgun, but you look like you’re about to pass out. You’d probably be better off stretching out back here, maybe try to sleep it off a little.”

 

It sounds like a good idea. Petulantly, Castiel wants to protest, to prove that he doesn’t need to sleep. That he can bear this. But his legs are shaking, and his mind feels thick and slow, so he folds himself into the back of the car. Dean rests a hand on the roof and peers in, passing Castiel the thin blanket. He takes it.

 

Dean closes the door and gets into the front. Castiel winces, shifting. He can’t lean back, as that puts a sharp pressure on his open wounds, but sitting up so straight is taxing. Dean glances back at him through the rear view mirror as he twists the key in the ignition.

 

“Dude, lay down or something. That can’t be comfortable.”

 

Castiel frowns. He holds Dean’s gaze for a moment before twisting himself to lay on his stomach. It’s an awkward contortion, one that takes him a bit of time, and he can feel Dean’s eyes on him the whole while. Once he has found a position that isn’t utter agony—he rolls onto his side, his back facing Dean, and curls against the seat, draping the blanket over his lap—Dean urges the car into motion.

 

It’s jarring; Castiel feels each bump and acceleration deep in his being. Each movement jolts his gaping wounds, has raw flesh rubbing against itself, against leather. He grits his teeth and squeezes his eyes shut, nausea rolling again in his stomach.

 

Soon, unconsciousness drags him back under, and he feels no more.

 

 

He wakes to a hand on his shin.

 

Castiel startles; he jerks upright, disoriented, and nearly bashes his head off the roof of the car.

 

“Whoa, hey, it’s okay. Just me; we’re here.” The voice doesn’t register initially, washing over him hazy and indistinct as reality filters back to him in fits and starts. The first thing he notices is the blanket, then the jacket, and the leather beneath him that creaks when he shifts. His eyes slide up to land on Dean, and— oh. Right. His fall. His wounds. The journey. He reaches up to scrub the back of his hand across his eyes in an attempt to dispel both his lingering grogginess and the burning ache blossoming in his throat, behind his eyes.

 

Dean has rescinded his hand by now, and he watches Castiel expectantly. After a moment, he pats Castiel’s leg once in reassurance and, apparently satisfied, withdraws from the car.

 

Castiel slides his legs off the seat and comes to sit fully upright. The movement tugs at his back, and pain flares anew just beneath his skin. He grits his teeth, pulls the blanket off his legs, and unfolds himself from the car.

 

The air is cold against his naked skin, and Dean’s jacket flaps open in the chill wind. Castiel shivers, cataloging the sensation, the stiff ache in his joints, the dull pain in his neck. He rolls it slightly, and something pops—relief trickles out. Interesting.

 

“Come on, you must be freezing; let’s get you inside.” Dean pushes off from where he’s been leaning against the car and shuts the door behind Castiel. He ducks under Castiel’s arm, lifting it so it rests over his shoulder, and slides his own arm around Castiel’s waist. It presses the jacket uncomfortably against his wounds, but Castiel says nothing. His legs are reluctant to move after being crunched up for over an hour, and he appreciates the support.

 

Dean must notice something in his face, though, because as they begin to hobble off toward the house—a small, one-floor building, Castiel notes, with siding that must have been white at some point but is now yellowed and brown with age and dirt—he begins to talk again. “Those painkillers should be kicking in soon if they haven’t already,” he says, adjusting his grip on Castiel’s waist. Castiel realizes he’s begun to lean against Dean, allowing him to bear more and more of his weight. He tries to take it back, but his body protests.

 

“Nothing’s gonna take it away entirely, but… should do some good.”

 

Personally, Castiel thinks this is likely as good as it’s going to get. He’s already a far cry from the blistering agony he endured at the moment of his fall; since then, the pain has eroded little by little until it became as now, a constant but bearable throb deep in the meat of his back. He isn’t so sure it’s the painkillers’ doing, though—he thinks it’s his Grace. It’s something he’s reluctant to examine too carefully, in the event that he might lose this small mercy, too. But there’s _something_ smoldering around the edges of where his power used to lie, some kind of lightly pulsing ember that’s as close to home as he’s likely to ever come again.

 

Then again, perhaps it _is_ just the painkillers.

 

Dean balances him precariously as he digs in the pocket of his jeans for something—a key. He twists it in the door, turns the handle, and shoves it inward, helping Castiel over the threshold. It is, if possible, even darker in here than it was outside; Castiel can make out an irregular shape in front of him, the faint blue outline of a shaded window on the right. Irritation prickles in his chest; his new sense of sight, or lack thereof, is worthless. If this is really how all humans perceive darkness, he doesn’t know how they’ve managed to survive this long.

 

There’s a dull click off to his left, and then the room is bathed in thin yellow light. Castiel squints, the brightness stabbing just behind his eyes, and as he adjusts to the change, he takes in the room before him. It’s not much—a simple, bare living space furnished with little more than the old, soft couch before him, a chipped bookshelf, and a television that even Castiel, unfamiliar with modern technology as he is, can pinpoint as outdated. The wallpaper is an unflattering shade of blue, peeling in places, and there’s a worn carpet stretching from wall to wall.

 

Dean shuffles him over to the couch and helps him to sit; he sinks deep into the cushions, as though the furniture means to swallow him and keep him here.

 

“Be right back,” Dean says, and already he is clomping back over to the yawning front door. He turns his head over his shoulder to call back to Castiel. “Just gotta get my stuff outta the car.”

 

Castiel watches the darkness devour him, and then looks back to the room. The light emanating from the one round ceiling fixture isn’t overly strong, now that his eyes have adjusted. It barely reaches to the edges of this small space, casting slight shadows in the corners. To his left, he can see a tiny countertop with a single wooden chair, and beige tile leading into what he presumes is the kitchen; the light barely strokes its fingertips against that room, painting the suggestion of appliances, countertops.

 

It’s all aged, outdated, and worn down. But it’s clean and feels well-loved, if a little lonely.

 

Dean chooses that moment to reappear, stomping his feet on the stairs before he comes back in and shuts the door behind him, one duffel bag slung over his shoulder and another clutched in his left hand.

 

“How’re ya holding up?” he asks, dropping one bag onto the counter and setting the other down on the chair. Castiel holds his gaze for a moment and then shrugs, looking away. He aches, feels like he’s coated in dirt and dried blood, and if he allows himself to think about Heaven, it’s as though a boulder is grinding down on his chest. He doesn’t know how to say any of this to a man he barely knows.

 

“I hear ya,” Dean says, which doesn’t make any sense at all, and then after a moment, he claps his hands together. “Okay. First things first; gotta get you and those wounds cleaned up. And then we’re gonna get you some clothes.”

 

The thought of warm water, of soft pants, or a shirt, makes something ache behind his ribs. He has only been human for several hours—a day at most—and yet he feels as though he’s been filthy and shivering for an age. Castiel attempts to stand, but the couch cushions have made fast their hold, and he struggles for a moment before Dean huffs, the corner of his mouth twisted up in amusement, and wraps an arm under Castiel’s shoulder to hoist him upright.

 

“Yeah, I know,” he says, and Castiel finds it fascinating how much this man feels the need to fill the silence with the sound of his voice—he wonders if this is some odd habit he has developed, if this is a way he has learned to make this house, this life, feel a little less empty. “Once it gets a hold of you, it doesn’t wanna let ya go.”

 

Dean releases Castiel once he’s standing, but he hovers close enough to grab hold if he wavers. He leads them through the small kitchen and into another tiled room—some sort of utility room, Castiel thinks, as there’s what he assumes to be a washer and dryer along with several other sterile-looking fixtures. They go through to the bathroom, a tiny space barely big enough to fit a squat bathtub, a toilet jammed up against the wall, and a sink nearly hidden by the open door. Dean sits him on the side of the tub.

 

“You’re, uh. Gonna have to take off the jacket,” he says with an apologetic wince as he leans over Castiel to twist one of the knobs. Water comes gushing out of the silver spout—Dean sticks his hand under it, makes a face, and shakes it off. “Needs to warm up a bit,” he says, wiping his hand on his jeans. “I’m just”—he gestures over his shoulder—“gonna grab some stuff.”

 

Castiel nods. Once Dean is gone, he peels the leather jacket off his body and lays it gingerly on the closed toilet lid. As he does so, he catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror and pauses, surprised. He’s not sure what he expected. Did he think he would look different, after the fall? That he would look the same?

 

The truth is somewhere in between.

 

Sweat has made his hair unruly—it sticks to his scalp in places, while in others it protrudes at odd angles, stiffened with dirt and grease. There are deep bags under his eyes, the flesh there purpled and dark. His eyes themselves are blue as ever, but the whites are bloodshot and angry. He’s pale, too, and smeared with dirt and the guts of crushed grass. He can’t see anything below his chest, but although his form isn’t changed—he’s just as broad and sturdy as ever—he feels he looks weak, frail. It’s likely just a projection of his current state of mind, a response to seeing only his physical self without the echo of his metaphysical presence lurking and shifting behind, but it sours his already poor mood, and he sits himself back on the edge of the bathtub with a frown.

 

Dean returns then, just as sorrow and loss are once again settling over him. Castiel looks up, finding him in the doorway—he’s got clothing draped over one arm, a plastic cup in one hand, and a small kit in the other. Dean sets the cup down on the bathtub beside Castiel and folds the clothing carefully on top of where Castiel has placed the jacket.

 

“Hope they fit,” Dean says as he reaches into a cabinet beside the bathtub. He pulls out a washcloth that’s thin and frayed, thread hanging in tangled ropes from all four edges. “I don’t know what size you are, but sweatpants and a t-shirt seemed like a good shot.” His gaze flicks over Castiel, assessing in a way it hadn’t been before. “Looks like you’re about my size, anyway.”

 

Washcloth in hand, Dean settles down at Castiel’s feet. His knees groan and pop as he descends, and he winces. “Heh. Must be gettin’ old.”

 

Castiel looks away, turning his head to gaze out the window. Its slatted blinds are twisted open, but there’s nothing save thick darkness filtering through. When he looks back, Dean has begun to pull various items out of the kit; he arranges them neatly on the floor—a plastic bottle, a roll of white, scissors. He picks up the washcloth again and reaches for the cup.

 

“Okay. Let’s get you cleaned up a little. Or— uh, maybe you should… Do you wanna… clean off a little first?” As Castiel watches, he notices that Dean has begun to blush. He isn’t sure why; it’s a valid question, and Castiel certainly _would_ like to get clean. He looks down at the smears of dirt, tracing fragmentary patterns down his chest where they’ve been run through with sweat.

 

Dean thrusts the washcloth and cup at him, and Castiel fumbles as he takes them. “Just… do your chest. And stuff. I’ll get your back once you’re done.”

 

He turns his face away, jaw clenched, and looks at the door. As he does so, Castiel sits fully in the tub. He pushes down the plug, allowing the water to pool; it’s warm and clean and feels divine against his naked skin. There’s a bar of soap sitting in one corner, and he picks it up, turns it over in his hands. As he works it into a lather, he marvels at the mundanity of this task. Cleanliness is something he had taken for granted before, something that garnered barely a thought.

 

Sitting here, hunched over himself in several inches of rapidly darkening water, with Dean kneeling at the edge of the plastic bathtub, he feels humbled in a way he never has.

 

The entire time, Dean neglects to look at him. He only turns back once Castiel has finished, after he has pulled the plug and the grimy water has begun to drain, and he is seated once more on the tub’s side. He takes the cup and the washcloth back and motions for Castiel to turn slightly, so Dean has better access to his back. At this angle, he is once more facing out the window, at the darkness beyond.

 

Dean is gentle, his touch careful and attentive, but as he brings the washcloth nearer and nearer to the broken and shredded flesh in the middle of Castiel’s back, each drag of fabric is like sandpaper, like the rake of knife-sharp nails against his open wounds. He digs his fingers into the meat of his thighs and clenches his jaw, unable to keep from tensing.

 

Behind him, Dean makes a soft noise, rubbing gently at the small of his back. “Sorry,” he says quietly, “but I gotta get the dirt out, or these’ll get infected.”

 

That’s the last either of them speaks for a while. The bathroom is filled with the heavy sound of water splashing into the tub, the wet slap of the washcloth, the loud, shaky sound of Castiel’s breathing.

 

Dean works in silence. It feels they spend hours crouched there, Castiel sweating and trembling as Dean rinses dirt and blood from the craters where his wings used to be. Each new cupful of water stings, each press of the washcloth stabs, and soon Castiel has no room for any thought other than remaining upright and enduring this.

 

When Dean finally sets the cloth and cup aside (the fabric is stained a mottled pink now, and Dean hangs it over the tub’s spigot), Castiel could cry with relief. His entire body is throbbing, and his muscles ache from holding taut for so long. Dean has gentle hands on his back, fingers pressing lightly just around the edges of his wounds.

 

He huffs—a long breath imbued with an emotion Castiel cannot identify—and pulls his hands away. “Jesus, Cas.”

 

Castiel twists to look at Dean over his shoulder. His face is grim, mouth turned down at the corner, and he scrubs a wrist over it. A moment passes. Dean gestures inarticulately. “They’re, uh… these are pretty bad.” He leans back in, peering more closely, and there are fingertips again hovering at the edges of the remnants of his left wing. “The hell happened to you?”

 

Castiel drops his hands to the edge of the tub. He hangs his head. He can feel the phantom of hands on his wing joints, tearing, pulling. He can feel his own Grace revolting against him, ripping its way out of his body and tearing its manifestations out along with it.

 

He says nothing.

 

“These are gonna be a bitch to heal,” Dean says finally. “I mean, it’s pretty much the furthest fucking thing from a clean cut, and—” He breaks off as Castiel shifts, wincing as something sharp scrapes inside his wound. “Is that bone?” Dean sounds incredulous, and Castiel can feel him leaning in even closer, can feel the heat emanating off his body as he hovers.

 

“Probably my secondary scapula,” Castiel says. Something is changing; the white-hot flash of pain, of memory, have become muffled and furred. He is detached from it now, and it makes the words come easier. “I can feel it shifting.”

 

“Your—” Dean pulls away, sucking in a breath. “Yeah,” he says weakly. “Right. Secondary scapula, cool, yeah…”

 

A moment passes. Castiel tries to catch a glimpse of Dean out of the corner of his eye, but his head is bowed and it doesn’t do him any good.

 

“I have no idea what to do about that,” he admits finally, flicking the cap of the small plastic bottle he’s holding off and on, off and on. Castiel shrugs. The movement sends new wavelengths of pain catapulting through his body.

 

“I believe my Grace will be able to deal with it, in time.”

 

Dean grunts. He’s quiet for another moment, and then he sighs and flicks the cap definitively off the plastic bottle. “I’m gonna rinse these out one more time, okay? It’s saline solution; it’ll help keep ‘em clean, but it’s gonna sting like a bitch.”

 

Castiel clenches his jaw. “Yes, alright.”

 

It does, as Dean said, _sting like a bitch_ , and it does again when Dean soaks puffy wads of gauze in the solution and packs them gingerly inside the cavities. _‘Cause I can’t stitch it up_ , he’d said as he worked, taping over the gauze with medical adhesive.

 

By the time he’s fully finished, Castiel aches nearly as fiercely as he had in the field. He has never been _tired_ before, not in the human sense, but there’s a thickness in his skull and a dry burning just behind his eyes. He thinks irrationally that he could lean against the wall here and sleep for a millennium.

 

Dean, of course, doesn’t let him.

 

He helps Castiel into his clothes, guiding the boxers and sweatpants on over his ankles and supporting his weight while he pulls them up over his thighs, guides his arms through the shirt when Castiel realizes that lifting them above shoulder height stretches at his injuries, slides the zip-up hoodie on over top of it.

 

Once he is clothed, Dean braces him once again and helps him out of the bathroom. “I’d say I’ll give ya the grand tour, but you’ve already seen pretty much everything.” There’s something self-deprecating about his tone, and he doesn’t look at Castiel as he speaks. “That’s the bedroom through there,” he says, nodding to the left as they emerge into the utility room. “Everything else, you’ve already seen.”

 

Dean pauses for a moment. There’s an awkwardness to him, now.

 

“You, uh. You can take the bed. If you want. I’m fine on the couch.” But Castiel shakes his head, urging Dean to continue on through the kitchen.

 

“Thank you, Dean, but I think I could sleep on anything.” Dean seems reluctant to continue on, but he does so with a frown.

 

“No, man, seriously, that’s not gonna be good for your—”

 

“I’ll be fine.”

 

“Dude, you just said you fell—”

 

“I’ll be _fine,_ Dean.” It comes out harsher than intended, the cold slap of winter wind on a sunny day, and Dean falls silent. His grip tightens, but Castiel can’t find it in himself to apologize. His patience has been ground thin, and he doesn’t have the energy to attempt to patch the holes.

 

When they come back into the living room, Dean helps Castiel sit on the couch. He looks as though he wants to say something but reconsiders, just scrubs a hand through his hair and looks down at him. He pulls his phone out of his back pocket and flips it open, makes a face at what he sees, then snaps it closed and puts it back again.

 

“Little past dinner time, but I’m fucking starved, and you look like you could use something.” He raises his brows, as though challenging Castiel to contradict him. “I didn’t get a chance to restock the fridge after this last hunt, so I’m gonna run out. There’s a gas station not far from here that’s open 24/7. Should only take me… half an hour, forty-five minutes max?”

 

Castiel feels himself staring blankly, letting Dean’s words wash over him in waves he doesn’t try to absorb.

 

“I’m guessin’ you don’t wanna come with. You gonna be okay here until I get back? ...Castiel?”

 

He blinks, and Dean’s words register. “Yes.”

 

Dean doesn’t look convinced. He watches Castiel for a moment and then nods to himself resignedly. “Okay. Good talk.” When he’s pulled the door open and is halfway over the threshold, he turns back, speaking over his shoulder. “Be back soon; try not to burn the place down, alright?”

 

Castiel is asleep before he hears the door close.

 

 

He wakes to the smell of tomatoes, sharp and acidic. There is a low electronic hum emanating from his left, accompanied by the rustle of plastic, the banging of doors and drawers. Castiel lies there for a moment, eyes squeezed shut, head pounding an insistent rhythm against the forefront of his skull. Dean is humming to himself, some tuneless melody Castiel cannot name.

 

He remembers the strains of song woven in himself, the sound of thousands of voices raised in ethereal harmony— _Glory, Glory, Glory_.

 

When loss surges, burning like bile in the back of his throat, it’s almost expected.

 

There’s a high-pitched beep, and the acid smell intensifies. Castiel opens his eyes and gathers himself, squinting over at where Dean is pulling a small plastic _thing_ out of a microwave. He turns toward Castiel and startles when their eyes meet, cutting himself off mid-phrase and pausing in the middle of the kitchenette.

 

He recovers quickly, setting the plastic tray onto the counter and smirking. “Mornin’, sunshine,” he says, tossing a fork beside it. It lands with a metallic clatter, and Dean turns his back to Castiel, ripping cardboard off another plastic container, which he sets inside the microwave. It resumes its low hum.

 

Castiel turns his attention to the tray. Steam is curling lazily from its surface, which is white and red and generally indistinct.

 

“Microwave lasagna,” Dean supplies, leaning over with his elbows on the counter. “Not much, but it’s hot. You do okay while I was gone?”

 

He fights the urge to roll his eyes, instead leveling Dean with a sharp look. Injured or not, he is ( _was_ ) an ageless inter-dimensional being. He is not a child, and while Dean’s aid is appreciated, his patronization is not.

 

“What?” Dean’s face is screwed up, brow furrowed tightly. “Just asking!”

 

The microwave beeps again, and Dean’s gaze snaps to it with something akin to relief. He turns his back on Castiel and retrieves the second tray, which he brings over to the couch along with the first and a glass of water.

 

Dean hands over one of the trays and settles himself beside Castiel, placing his glass of water down on the small coffee table in front of them. He pokes at his food, cutting it up with the broad side of his fork and pushing the pieces around so that more steam billows up in thick puffs.

 

Castiel drops his gaze to his own meal. The smell is twisting something in his stomach, and he looks down at the puddles of liquid settled atop what he assumes is meant to be cheese with no small measure of trepidation. He has eaten before, although he has never required sustenance of this sort to survive, but has never found the sensation pleasurable.

 

“If you’re done staring it down, maybe try eating it,” Dean suggests, and Castiel looks over to find him watching, eyebrows raised. The corner of his mouth is turned up in what Castiel thinks is amusement. He looks back down to his meal.

 

“I’m not hungry.”

 

“Bullshit.” He frowns and casts a glare at Dean. It rolls off of him like rainwater off wax, and he shrugs, shoveling another copious forkful of lasagna into his mouth. He speaks with it pocketed in one cheek and points accusingly at Castiel with his red-flecked fork. “You lost like a shitton of blood back there,” he says, going in for another forkful. “Gotta get your energy up.”

 

Still doubtful, Castiel prods at his lasagna. It squelches.

 

“Jesus Christ, just take a bite already.”

 

Castiel glares once more, but he obeys. The taste is… extremely odd. He can’t pinpoint from what region the grain which made this pasta hails, nor can he taste the molecules which make up the tomatoes. There are meaty chunks in the sauce, but Castiel cannot even tell what meat it is, let alone how old the animal was when it went to slaughter. Instead, it tastes salty, acid-sweet, watery.

 

He makes a face.

 

Dean takes one look at him and bursts out laughing, a broad smile splitting his face. Castiel glances up as he swallows, affronted, and Dean shakes his head.

 

“I’m sorry, it’s just… Shit, Cas, you look like you just ate a handful of dirt. You should see your face.”

 

Castiel frowns down at his lasagna and cuts off another forkful, pushing it around inside the tin. “The taste is… unpleasant.” He takes another bite and chews it slowly, considering.

 

“Yeah, you’re probably right.” Dean is looking down at his own half-eaten lasagna now, and he shrugs. “Ain’t exactly a five-star meal, but you get used to it.”

 

The thought sparks something in him, stabbing at his chest. “I don’t want to get used to it,” he grouses, squinting. “Eating is tedious.”

 

Dean says nothing, and when Castiel looks up, he finds him already watching, eyes soft. He bristles, stabbing at his meal with more force than necessary. He doesn’t need Dean’s pity.

 

They finish the meal in silence, no sound but the soft scrape of metal against plastic. Dean eats with enthusiasm, chasing chunks of tomato and sauce with his fork once his pasta is gone. Unpleasant as it is, Castiel makes himself consume half of the tin, but he can’t force down more than that. Dean takes the tray without comment, wrapping it in plastic and putting it in the fridge. _For later_ , he says. _In case you get hungry_.

 

Dean is standing in the living room now, phone in hand. “Goddamn, it’s late,” he says. Castiel cannot see his soul, but he thinks he can read Dean’s tiredness in the droop of his shoulders, the wrinkles underneath his eyes. “You sure you don’t wanna take the bed? Offer still stands.”

 

Castiel shakes his head. He feels better here, on the far edge of the trailer near the door, not buried in the bowels of this human’s habitat. The thought of sleeping in a bed (the thought of sleeping at all) churns his emotions, bringing up his fear and panic and anger like fresh-tilled earth. “No. Thank you.”

 

Dean sighs, and after a moment, he retreats. Relief settles over Castiel then, and he allows himself to sink into the couch. He doesn’t need sleep now, he thinks to himself, even as his bones grow heavy and mold to the cushions. He just got some.

 

“Here you go.”

  
Castiel snaps his eyes open—strange. He doesn’t remember closing them. Dean is standing at the arm of the couch, clutching a white pillow and several blankets, which he sets down beside Castiel.

 

“If you, uh, need anything, I’m just down the hall.” He’s scratching at the back of his neck, and Castiel nods. Dean nods in response, gives him a tight smile, and turns back the way he came.

 

He pauses for a moment, looking back over his shoulder, says, “Night, Castiel,” and then he is gone.

 

 

_There’s no escape. The truth of it sneaks cold fingers underneath his ribs, clenches a fist around his lungs. “Please,” he begs, scrabbling for purchase. He finds none. “Please, don’t do this. You can’t—”_

 

_There are hands on his wings. Castiel jolts, trying to pull away, but he is rooted in place. His wing is snapped just above the joint and he screams, knees giving out as pain explodes like fire through his body. The hands are wrenching, and ripping, and shoving in through muscle and sinew and bone to dig sharp talons into his Grace. It flares under the touch, screaming in protest, in harmony with Castiel. They drag it out of his body, out of the holes they’ve made in his back._

 

_He’s falling. He’s_ falling _, he’s—_

 

There are hands on him.

 

Castiel jolts upright, his heart a jackhammer in his chest. He nearly smashes his face against his assailant, and in a moment, he has him in a headlock, drawing him down. His attacker makes a startled noise and tips forward, clearly not expecting the move, and Castiel capitalizes on the moment of weakness. He twists them, pulling his assailant _down_ and rolling off of his back and onto the floor, on top of him.

 

Panic is in his throat now, cutting off his air, choking him. He swings wildly, but his punch is deflected, so he brings his hands to the attacker’s neck, fingers pressing with bruising force against his windpipe. The attacker struggles beneath him, hands clutching at Castiel’s wrists, feet lashing out beneath him, but Castiel is solid atop the man’s waist, his hands sure.

 

As his attacker struggles in vain beneath him, Castiel begins to calm. He becomes aware of himself, slowly. He blinks. The room comes into focus around him, the thin carpet, the man beneath him…

 

Dean.

 

Dean, who’s staring at him with eyes wide and bulging, face purpling beneath his hands.

 

Castiel flinches, yanking his hands away, and jerks backward, off of Dean’s body. He lands ungracefully on his ass, back smacking against the couch. The impact sends shockwaves of pain ricocheting through his body—he lets out an involuntary gasp. Adrenaline is still electric in his veins, and his chest heaves. He’s trembling.

 

Dean coughs, one hand coming up to rub at his throat. He lies there for a moment, staring up at the ceiling, as Castiel fights off the black at the edges of his vision and attempts to unravel what, exactly, just happened.

 

Slowly, Dean comes to sit. He leans back on his palms, taking slow, deep breaths. He clears his throat and winces. “Jesus Christ, Cas.” His voice is strained, scraped raw. Guilt has begun to leech into Castiel’s skin, but his mind is still thick with a heady mixture of pain and confusion.

 

“What happened?”

 

“What happened?” Dean sounds incredulous, face twisted up to match. “The hell do you mean, ‘What happened?’”

 

Castiel doesn’t know what to say.

 

“You had a nightmare is _what happened_ ,” Dean says eventually, low and deliberate, as though speaking to a child. “I came in here to wake you up and next thing I know I’m flat on my ass being throttled!”

 

A nightmare.

 

_Please, don’t do this_.

 

The memory washes over him, cold and terrifying. Of course. His disorientation is melting off his skin, bit by bit. He was on the couch; he must have fallen asleep. He’s in Dean’s home. He fell.

 

“I was dreaming,” he says finally, mostly to himself. If that’s dreaming, he doesn’t think he likes it. It’s unsettling, not being able to sift imagination separate from reality.

 

“Uh, yeah.” _Obviously_. The unspoken meaning comes through clearly. Castiel scowls. “God, shit.” Dean rubs at his throat again—Castiel looks down and sees the angry red outline of fingertips already forming on the flesh there. “Man, that’s the last time I wake you up. Can’t believe you got the drop on me.”

 

Castiel rolls his eyes. “I’m not helpless, Dean.” Now that he is beginning to settle, the pain stabbing hot and fierce beneath his shoulder blades funnels to the forefront of his attention.

 

“What are you talking about? Didn’t you just, like, lose literally all of your mojo?”

 

“Yes,” Castiel agrees, and now it is he who speaks slow and deliberate. “But I don’t require ‘mojo’ for hand-to-hand combat. It’s helpful, of course, but I have been fighting for Heaven for longer than humanity has existed.” Dean’s face slackens as he considers. Pride unfurls in Castiel’s chest. “I’m a warrior, Dean. I don’t need Grace to kill.”

 

Dean is silent for a moment. When he speaks, it’s accompanied by a hoarse huff of laughter. “Point taken.” He pushes himself up off of the ground, and Castiel follows.

 

“I didn’t injure you, did I?” he asks, squinting at Dean’s throat as though he can see the severity of his pain. Once, he could have.

 

Dean shakes his head. “Nah. I mean, it’s definitely gonna bruise. And probably sting like a bitch for a while. But I’ve had worse.”

 

Castiel nods. After a moment, Dean crosses to him. He lays a hand on his shoulder, and their gazes meet for one long, tense moment. It stretches between them. Castiel can feel every point where Dean’s skin meets the fabric covering his body, can sense some intensity charging the limited space between them. The corner of Dean’s mouth quirks up into a smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes, and he slaps Castiel’s shoulder once before retreating back to the other end of the house.

 

Castiel stands there for a moment, darkness pressing flat palms against his body. The thought of going back to sleep crawls over him, unsettling, and he decides that he will pass the remainder of the night awake. He sits back down on the couch, and his gaze settles on the television.

 

A thought comes to him, then.

 

He closes his eyes, and reaches his being out toward it. It catches, and the television spits static as it flares to life. A bald man is reading off a card, two women standing at a buzzer. He closes his eyes and reaches out again. Static. The channel changes. Again. Static. Again.

 

When he opens his eyes, he sees a close-up of a flowerless plant, a bee perched atop it.

 

_As we can see, the bee has decided to fly to its original feeding site._ Castiel lets the words surround him. He’s tired suddenly, drained in a way that’s more than physical. _It gets to a location where there used to be a feeding place, but now it’s gone._

 

Has he overexerted himself? Manipulating electricity takes very little power, but it’s possible that he’s used too much.

 

His stomach lurches. What if this afterimage of his Grace isn’t replenishable? If every time he reaches for the embers, they cool just a little bit further?

 

The thought lies heavy in his stomach.

 

This is his life now. This heavy humanness, this eating and sleeping and dreaming. This sagging couch, this threadbare carpet. These borrowed clothes.

 

He used to dress himself in ozone and starlight, wield the energy of the universe, peer through dimensions. Now he can hardly see without artificial light. He bleeds, and hurts, and one day, he will die.

 

The room is pressing in on him. This tiny space, made of metal and wood and plastic, wasn’t made to contain an angel. Castiel wasn’t crafted from God’s Glory to sit here, stagnant, and bleed his life away.

 

He stands, body thrumming with all he has lost. But he has nowhere to go, and he isn’t well enough or stupid enough to push himself too far, so he settles for wandering around the room, examining the smaller details to which he has not paid much attention.

 

There’s a bookshelf in the corner. Castiel crosses to it, eyes skimming over the sparsely-filled wooden shelves. There’s an assortment of books sprinkled throughout—Vonnegut, Tolkien, and some which have no author inscribed upon the spine. He takes one of these, a heavy, leather-bound volume embossed with gold, and pries it carefully open. An etching of a griffin greets him, along with blocky typesetting that Castiel places no later than the early 1800s. He closes the volume and slides it back into its place.

 

There are several small plastic cases as well, stacked vertically on one of the bottom shelves. The case on top proclaims _Star Wars: The Force Awakens._ He’s not sure what that means. He runs a hand over them, finds their covers glossy and smooth.

 

Several shelves up, there are two framed photos. Castiel picks one up, squinting at it in the low light. There are five people in it, four of them gathered around one central figure in a wheelchair. Two women, one of whom reminds him a bit of Hester. Stern and proud, with blond hair hanging loose around her shoulders. The other is younger—her daughter, perhaps?

 

Two of the men Castiel doesn’t recognize, but the last is Dean, undoubtedly. He’s younger here, by a few years maybe, but it’s definitely him. None of them seem to be particularly happy, but they stand close, familiar.

 

He wonders where they are now.

 

The other picture has Dean it in as well, along with the other young man. There’s a third man, older, with black hair and several days of scruff, and a different blond woman. They’re all smiling at the camera, huddled close.

 

Castiel runs his fingers across the glass. Who are these people? What do they mean to Dean, and what happened to them? It’s possible that they live somewhere close to here, or that Dean moved away and is divided from them by nothing more than an expanse of land, but Castiel doubts it. There’s something about the heavy silence that blankets this house, the loneliness that hovers thick in the air, that tells him that isn’t the case.

 

If he had his Grace, he could peel back the curtain of Dean’s past and learn these things, could peer into the thin veil that separates dimensions and see how he fits into this universe and the next.

 

But he doesn’t have his Grace, and he can do none of these things.

 

He sets the photographs back on the shelf, tilting them so they face precisely how they had before he picked them up, and thinks about his own family. Anna, whom he lost centuries ago, Balthazar, Gabriel… Even Michael and Uriel and Raphael, who had betrayed him, punished him, cursed him to this half-life, but whom he’ll miss nonetheless.

 

He is never going to see them again. The thought forms within him, ironclad and certain. He is never going back.

 

Numbly, Castiel walks back to the couch. He faces it and, after a moment, drops down to his knees. They creak and pop as he bends, another reminder of his newfound frailty. With a shaky breath, he folds his hands and sets them on the couch, bows his head in prayer. Tears are burning in his throat.

 

_Father,_ he thinks, _I ask you to give me strength. Brothers, I ask for your forgiveness, although I am unworthy_.

 

Silence echoes, thick and formless in his skull. Where his siblings’ voices used to reside, there is nothing but a dull ringing.

 

How do humans do this? How do they settle on the hard ground, time and time again, to spout prayer and supplication, only to hear nothing but the sound of their own breathing?

 

He drops his hands to his thighs and clenches them into fists, fighting back the sting of tears that lashes at his eyes. This is his lot now; he fought for humanity, and now he must learn to become it. He made his choice, and now he must learn to live with it.

 

Slowly, Castiel stands. He settles himself back on the couch.

 

He looks out the window and watches night melt into day.

 

 

His mouth is dry, and his back aches.

 

Castiel swallows, but it doesn’t do much to help. His tongue feels thick in his mouth, and there’s a bitter taste coating it. When he opens his eyes, he has to squint against the sharp shafts of sunlight raking their fingernails across the room. He makes a small, involuntary noise, and scrubs his face with the back of his hand.

 

To put it bluntly, he feels terrible.

 

The sun is hot, and he’s sweating beneath his blankets. He pushes them off, struggling to sit without tugging too much at his back wounds. He doesn’t quite succeed; as he hunches, elbows on his knees, his injuries throb sharply.

 

Something is sizzling in the kitchen, and a smell wafts in, savory and rich.

 

Dean must be awake.

 

Castiel blinks, attempting to push the remnants of sleep from his eyes, to cast off the heaviness lingering in his limbs, his mind. But it’s clinging to him still, a film he can’t quite shed.

 

“Hey, Cas, you’re awake!” Dean’s voice is bright and sharp. It drives into Castiel’s skull like a spike. “How’re you feeling?”

 

Lousy. “Fine.”

 

Dean snorts. “Yeah, I’ll bet.” Castiel looks over and finds him hovering over the stove, a black pan in one hand and a spatula in the other. He’s moving something yellow around—eggs, he thinks. “Drink some water; you’re probably pretty dehydrated. And you can have some more painkillers soon if your back’s bothering you.”

 

He reaches for the glass of water still lingering on the coffee table, half-drunk and lukewarm, and swallows it down in one long gulp. It does help somewhat, at least with the feeling in his mouth. He brings it into the kitchen and fills it with water from the tap.

 

Dean is pulling pieces of bread out of a small electric toaster now, slathering butter on their golden-brown faces.

 

“What are you making?” Castiel asks, watching the fat melt and pool.

 

“Scrambled eggs. And toast. Would’ve got some bacon, but that shit’s expensive, and I don’t like to steal from the gas station.” Dean’s face lights up with a winning smile, and he spoons half of the eggs onto a chipped white plate. “Everybody knows me there. You want some? I made enough for two.”

 

It does smell appealing. Castiel admits this to himself as he watches Dean sprinkle salt and pepper over the eggs. He squirts a thick line of watery ketchup on top and grabs one of the pieces of toast. “I don’t need to eat.”

 

Dean laughs. He snags a fork from one of the drawers on his left. “Dude, yes you do. You gotta be hungry; you barely ate half of that lasagna last night.”

 

To Castiel’s chagrin, there is a gnawing, hollow feeling in his abdomen. But the thought of engaging in something else so mundane is repulsive. He just ate, he just slept, he just drank. How much more does he need to do?

 

Dean rips a chunk out of the bread with his teeth, groaning in exaggerated appreciation and shooting Castiel a smug smile. “Come on,” he says, while food is still pocketed in his cheek. “This shit’s delicious. You’re missing out.”

 

Irritation needles at his skin. He glares.

 

“Alright, suit yourself.” Dean doesn’t seem overly affected; he ferries his plate over to the small counter and slides into the wooden chair behind it, bends over his plate and frames it with his elbows.

 

Castiel’s eyes catch on the clumps of fluffy yellow which Dean spears with his fork, the smear of red that adorns them. His gaze follows as Dean lifts the fork to his mouth, and when Castiel looks up, his eyes are knowing. Thankfully, he says nothing.

 

“So,” Dean asks, after he’s swallowed and gone back again for another mouthful. “How’s your first 12 hours of being human?”

 

His stomach drops. There’s a sour taste in the back of his mouth; he looks away. He thinks of the nightmare, how he would have rather died than go back to sleep, the moment when he’d bent his head and tried to pray.

 

“Aw, come on, it’s not that bad. I mean, you kinda got the short end of the stick, with the wing stuff, and…” He gestures vaguely. “But it’s only gonna get better from here.”

 

Words are lodging themselves in the back of Castiel’s throat. He can’t pull them out; they stick there, unrealized.

 

“Is it really that much different from being an angel? I mean, okay, guess there’s the flying, and the lack of angel batteries, but—”

 

“You have no idea what you’re talking about.” His voice is brittle but sharp, and it snaps at the end of Dean’s sentence. Castiel can’t find it within himself to be sorry.

 

“Whoa, okay, sorry. I just meant—”

 

“What you _meant_ doesn’t matter.” Castiel looks over to him, jaw tight. His heart is pounding in his chest. “And I’m not going to stand here and have my suffering trivialized by someone who knows nothing about it.”

 

There’s silence for a moment, and the air feels tense. Pulled taut, as a bowstring stretched back to its limit.

 

Dean exhales, and the tension snaps. “That’s not what I meant.” It’s not an apology, but Castiel can feel something humbled, something guilty, lurking just behind his words. He watches Dean for a moment, and then he looks away.

 

Memories drift up from the depths of his mind unbidden, and he cannot help but be swept away.

 

There’s cold wind on his face, sifting through his wings, buffeting his arms. Ice crystals settle in his hair; he can feel them licking at his ears, his forehead, the back of his neck. Anael is before him, her red hair glinting like fire in the sun.

 

The memory morphs, and he’s flying still, but this time it’s around his Father’s throne, in eternal golden light. His Glory fills Castiel, warm and awesome, and his siblings’ voices echo in his ears.

 

His Father is gone, but the voices remain. Their song turns, major modulating to minor, joy to lamentation. There is weeping, and confusion, and loss that does not fade.

 

He’s on earth, fighting beside Gabriel, driving his blade into the heart of a demon. Its twisted face curls in on itself, shrieking in wordless agony. Around him, humans fight in tandem with angels, their souls shining bright and righteous.

 

“Cas?” The voice filters slowly down to him, as though through water. Castiel drags himself to the surface; Dean is observing him, his food forgotten. There is a furrow in his brow, a downward tilt to his full pink lips. “What’re you thinking about?”

 

He doesn’t know how to articulate it; there aren’t words grand enough to encompass all that he has lost.

 

“Souls.” It’s the truth, albeit a lessened one, but it does nothing to ease the confusion marring Dean’s face.

 

“Souls? Like… human souls?”

 

“Yes.” Castiel looks out the window, at the shift and murmur of the world. “My true sight… it surpassed the physical. I could see the energy in the trees. The photosynthesis occurring within each cell of every leaf.” He looks back to Dean, examining the green of his eyes, the freckles that lie spattered like paint across his nose. “I would have been able to see your soul within you. I’m… not sure how to describe it.”

 

Dean makes a face. “Sounds trippy.”

 

Castiel shrugs and looks away again. “I suppose. At any rate, it’s just another thing I lost when I fell.”

 

Dean is silent for a long moment. When he does speak, it’s quiet, and he looks down at his plate rather than meet Castiel’s eyes. “I, uh. I know what you mean.” Castiel tilts his head. He’s not sure what Dean can understand about falling, and is relatively certain that, in fact, he doesn’t get it at all. “Well, not the falling, but. I’ve lost some people, so.”

 

He thinks back to the bookshelf, the two photographs displayed among well-used books and plastic-coated cases. “The pictures,” he hears himself say, “on the bookcase. Were those…?”

 

Dean nods, mouth curling into a small mirthless smile. “Uh, yeah. They… they weren’t all family by blood, but they were as good as.”

 

Castiel thinks of his own family, of his siblings who were born of God’s Glory fully formed, and he thinks he understands. “I’m sorry,” he says after a moment, although he already knows that there are no words to ease that ache.

 

“Yeah, me too.” Dean pushes his plate away from him, and he looks up. Castiel reads pain there, bitterness and resignation. “Anyway, some of it was a long time ago. S’not fair, but it’s the way it is. Learned that lesson a long time ago.”

 

Castiel can’t help but agree.

 

 

“Turn a little more?”

 

Castiel obeys, twisting so that Dean has full access to his back. It’s been two days since he fell, and his wounds feel no better than before. It’s infuriating how slowly this body mends without the aid of his Grace. When he had voiced these concerns, Dean had just laughed and clapped him on the back. _All part of being human,_ he’d said, as though that weren’t the crux of all Castiel’s issues.

 

“Okay, I’m gonna start taking these off now.” Castiel nods, bracing himself, but can’t refrain from wincing as Dean peels the tape away. It tugs at his skin, at the edges of his raw, open wounds. He can feel the gauze sticking to flesh and blood and inhales sharply. Dean murmurs apologies, but he doesn’t stop, tugging softly at whatever he’d placed there until Castiel’s breathing becomes labored.

 

He doesn’t realize Dean has finished until the bottle of pills is pressed into his hands, along with a glass of water.

 

“Here,” Dean says, catching Castiel’s eye. “Take two more. And you can keep that bottle—every 12 hours or so should do it.”

 

He fumbles the cap off the bottle and gulps them down gratefully. They have no immediate effect, but Dean has already explained to him the concept of delayed release. Castiel finds it counterproductive, but humans have always had a way of making things more complicated than they need to be.

 

“You know, I used to do this all the time for my little brother.” Dean is back to work now, peeling off the second bandage and removing the gauze that lies beneath. Castiel tries to concentrate on his words and not his fingers, but he isn’t overly successful. “After a hunt went sideways, I’d stitch him up with dental floss, or pop his shoulder back into place. Never wanted to go to a hospital; they always ask too many questions, and besides, we never had health insurance or anything. Couldn’t really afford that shit, you know? Now it’s mostly me working on myself, though, and let me tell you: it’s a hell of a lot harder than fixing somebody else up.”

 

Dean peels the last of the gauze away with a burning rip, and Castiel clenches his teeth. “What happened to him?” His hands only still for a moment, but it’s long enough to draw Castiel’s notice. “Dean?”

 

His ministrations resume; Castiel hears the snip of scissors, the pop of a bottle cap, and then there’s sharp pain as Dean rinses his wounds. He jerks, and Dean mumbles an apology.

 

“He died. Couple’a years back.” He doesn’t offer any further explanation, and Castiel doesn’t press the issue. Dean works in silence for several long moments, hands tilting his back this way and that.

 

“Well, I don’t think it’s infected,” he says finally. “But it really is pretty damn deep. Those little bone pieces are still in there too.” He takes another moment, presumably to examine the wounds further, and then Castiel can hear him rustling through his first aid kit, preparing whatever he’s taken out.

 

“Y’know, I can’t say I’ve ever dealt with anything like this before.” He sticks a wad of something into one of the wounds and Cas makes a small, pained noise. He jerks away, unable to help himself. “Hey, hold still.”

 

“It hurts.”

 

“Yeah, I know, but I gotta re-pack this.”

 

“You could be a little gentler.” It comes out harsher than intended, pain morphing into a fast-growing annoyance that bubbles up in his chest.

 

“I’m doing the best I can, here,” Dean bites back, voice tight. It feeds his burgeoning anger.

 

“Then _the best you can_ isn’t good enough.” Castiel huffs an irritated breath, bitterness like a vice around his heart. “If I had my Grace, it would’ve been healed by now.”

 

“Yeah, well, last I checked, you were shit outta luck on that front.” Dean’s hands are less gentle than before, and Castiel digs his nails into the meat of his thigh as a fresh wave of pain throbs under his ministrations. “So I guess you’re gonna have to make do with what you’ve got.”

 

“Makeshift medical treatment, secondhand clothes, microwave lasagna, and a decaying couch,” Castiel lists bluntly. He can feel Dean’s muscles tensing against his skin.

 

“I offered you the bed.” His voice is tightly laced, but anger seeps out through the gaps.

 

Castiel scoffs.

 

“Look, man, I don’t know what the hell your problem is all of a sudden”—he rips off a piece of medical tape and slaps it against Castiel’s skin—“but I’ve done a lot for you, okay?”

 

“I never asked for your help.”

 

“Jesus Christ, Cas.” He’s stopped now, and though Castiel has his back to Dean and can’t see his face, he can imagine the incredulous look that must be smeared across it. “That’s seriously your response? ‘I didn’t ask for your help?’”

 

He says nothing.

 

Dean barks out a laugh. It isn’t a pleasant sound, and it raises the hair on the back of Castiel’s neck. “You’re something else, you know that?” He continues bandaging, hands rough and ungentle. By the time he’s finished, Castiel’s back is a solid mass of pain. “No one’s keeping you here. You don’t want my help? Fine by me. Go on and leave, if you hate it that much. Hell, I’ll even buy you a goddamn bus ticket.”

 

He isn’t sure what angers him more: Dean’s dismissal, or the way his stomach lurches at the thought. Either way, he scowls.

 

“You can clean this up. I’m going out for a drink.” He doesn’t turn his back, and after a moment, Dean sighs and leaves. Castiel can hear his heavy footfalls throughout the house, and then finally, the slam of the door.

 

He sits there for a long moment, allowing his anger and bitterness to fester inside him, and then he begins to collect the bandages and tape from the floor. Castiel stuffs them back into the kit with little care for organization, and he snaps it shut with more force than strictly necessary.

 

Dean had the right idea, he thinks as he drops the kit back onto one of the shelves in the utility room. A drink sounds fantastic. But although he scours every room in the house, each cabinet and case, he comes up empty-handed.

 

Mood souring further, Castiel slams the door of the cabinet he’s currently peering into and straightens, leaning his hip against the countertop. He’s at a loss for what to do next, and settles for glancing over at the couch. Something twists in him at the sight of it, something helpless and trapped. Two days he has been here, and already he feels caged. He longs for fresh air, the scent of electricity on the wind.

 

Almost before he’s made the conscious decision, he’s crossing to the front door and pulling it open. Night filters in, crisp and sweet, and he tilts his face into it. It’s intoxicating.

 

He steps over the threshold and down the stairs, comes to stand in the low green-brown grass just outside the house. A light wind threads its way through his hair, slides fingers between his borrowed hoodie and shirt. It’s liberating, but there’s something else churning in the pit of his stomach, too, something that has him closing his eyes and trying desperately not to think about the past.

 

Castiel isn’t sure how long he stands there, arms stretched out to the side, letting nature fill the hollow places inside him, but eventually he straightens and opens his eyes. There aren’t any streetlights out here, removed as they are from urban life, and the lack of light pollution makes the stars gleam brightly against the velvet sky. They look dimmer now, and smaller, and there are less of them than Castiel remembers, but he imagines that for a human, the sight must be mesmerizing.

 

He wants to go up there, to pluck them from their sockets and take them inside of himself, to once again feel a part of the greater cosmos. The need is an itch inside him, building to the point of pain, and he whirls around, eyes snagging on the roof of Dean’s little home.

 

It isn’t much, not when he’s used to soaring above the clouds, to watching over earth from the heights of Heaven, but it’s something. He crosses back to the stairs, pulling himself up onto the railing. From there it’s easy to haul himself onto the roof—or, it would be, if his back weren’t screaming in protest the entire time. He manages, but he stays there for a moment, squeezing his eyes shut against the biting pain.

 

It passes before long, and Castiel stands. But when he looks up to the stars, his stomach sinks. He’s no nearer to them, not really—at most, he’s fifteen feet closer than he was before. It seems inconsequential. His feet carry him further, toward the far end of the roof, and it’s here that he comes to sit, drawing his knees in toward himself.

 

The moon is bright tonight, hanging low and swollen in the sky, and Castiel watches it for some time before movement catches his eye.

 

A star is streaking by. And there’s another, just after it, attempting to keep pace. Something low and mournful seats itself in his bones. He thinks of Anna, how when she had shed her Grace and plummeted to earth, she, too, had careened through the sky like a meteor, glowing blue and white, never to be seen again.

 

He wonders if he had looked like this—if his unquantifiable power had lit up the night in one final blaze of glory.

 

Two more meteors streak past, carving a bright white path through the sky. Castiel leans his arms on his knees, rests his chin on his hand. Sorrow is once again weighing him down, expanding in his belly until he feels he could burst.

 

Is this no more than a meteor shower? Or are these his brothers? His sisters? His friends?

 

Is this their Grace, crying out once more before it is extinguished? Are they falling too?

 

Could he even tell the difference?

 

 

“Cas!”

 

Dean is standing in the yard, neck craned back and peering up at him.

 

“The hell are you doing up there?”

 

Castiel turns back to the sky and watches another star glimmer out of existence. “Stargazing.”

 

“You been up there the whole time?”

 

He frowns. “Yes.”

 

“It’s been hours, man, what the hell?”

 

Irritation pools once more in his chest. He says nothing. After a moment, there comes the sound of scuffling, struggling. He looks over and finds that Dean has hauled himself onto the roof as well, and is crossing toward him. Castiel studies the easy way he inhabits his body, the way he is grounded, even here, the effortlessness with which he settles himself at Castiel’s side and thinks _I will never belong here_.

 

“I’ll be damned,” Dean says, as something painful and lost is trying to take root inside Castiel’s ribcage. “Must be a meteor sho— Hey, where are you going?”

 

But Castiel is already crossing away from him, sitting down on the edge of the roof nearest the railing and throwing his feet over the side.

 

“Cas!”

 

He slides off and leaves Dean there, alone with the stars.  
  



	3. Part II

In the little more than a week that Castiel has been here, he has come no closer to accepting the mortality thrust upon him. He has learned its motions—dreaming and aching and urinating and other draining tasks—but they weigh heavy on him.

 

Dean doesn’t understand; how could he, when humanity is all he has known? But he has been patient—forgiving. Apologizing for his crassness the night of the meteor shower had been difficult for Castiel, like shoving a hand down his throat and extracting his pride, and his words had emerged rough and mangled. But Dean had accepted them with a quirk of his lips, had even offered up an apology of his own.

 

Things are tense between them still, awkward in the way that follows when two strangers are thrust upon each other, cramped into close quarters and forced to cohabitate, to cultivate familiarity from scraps of knowledge.

 

His physical state isn’t much better off, although according to Dean, his wounds have healed much more quickly than expected. It’s still agonizingly slow for a being accustomed to rectifying even the gravest of injuries in no more than a moment, but Dean has told him that this sort of progress is unprecedented, and that he should be grateful.

 

He twists slightly, craning his neck to get a better view of his back in the mirror.

 

It’s astounding, really, that this is him. He feels both naked and mutilated, as though he is missing some integral piece of himself without which he can’t possibly be whole. And he is. To Dean, he must simply look like a man healing from a particularly nasty mauling, the way someone might look at a lizard bereft of its arms and legs and think it a snake. But Dean never saw him as he was meant to be, never watched his wings ripple and fold, never saw his eyes gleaming blue with divine power.

 

All Dean sees is red-pink flesh knitting itself back together, one day at a time.

 

In that sense, he can’t deny that his wounds have begun to approach something akin to manageable. They resemble flesh again, rather than some carcass clawed apart by scavengers. It’s a relatively new development—within the last few days—and it’s been a difficult process, for Dean at least.

 

Castiel remembers the first day his flesh had begun to shed, like a snake ridding itself of its old skin. Dean had been changing his bandages again, and as he peeled the gauze and tape away, stripes of skin and muscle had come with it, pulling away in his hands. He’d nearly been sick, gagging into the back of his hand as shattered remnants of bone and chunks of flesh slid thickly away from the mangled wounds, and even though Castiel had explained that it was likely his Grace’s way of reconciling his anatomy, of making him human, he had seemed ill at ease for the remainder of the night.

 

_It’s likely the remnants of my secondary deltoids,_ he’d tried to explain, _and the skin that covered them. The bits of bone are probably from my wing socket. My Grace has pushed them out_.

 

Dean had been quiet behind him, and when Castiel had looked back to see what he was doing, he was staring down at the rejected pieces of Castiel’s former anatomy, lying wet and fleshy on one of his old towels.

 

He’d thrown the towels away that night, and taken them somewhere out of the house. Castiel hadn’t followed.

 

Now, though, despite the slight unevenness of his skin, the little chunks of missing flesh where the meat of his back had been torn away along with his wings, there are no tattered remnants of his previous form. It’s still a little jagged around the edges, a little uneven, but it’s cleaner. More recognizable.

 

Castiel isn’t sure how he feels about that.

 

It’s nice to have a reprieve from the constant pain that’s plagued him since he fell, and it’s a comfort to see so clearly that he still has enough Grace left to set him apart from normal humans. But it’s his Grace that’s making him human, that’s working against him to remove all physical proof that this body is not _his_ , not really. Not entirely.

 

This lack of pain is solace, but it’s also a dark reminder of how close he is to becoming fully human—that someday, the only relic he’ll have of his true form will be two scars in the middle of his back.

 

“Okay, Narcissus, you look beautiful; now sit your ass back down here; 'm not finished yet.”

 

Dean’s voice rouses him from his contemplation, and he looks away from his reflection to where Dean is crouched at the foot of the tub, his first aid kit splayed open before him, its contents spread like viscera across the floor. Castiel gives his back one last forlorn look and then breaks away, sitting yet again on the edge of the bathtub.

 

Dean is quick to resume his work, adorning his wounds with gauze and tape and who knows what else. It doesn’t hurt as much as it used to—Castiel manages to remain somewhat relaxed while he works, a stark contrast to the days when he would dig his fists into his thighs, white-knuckled, until Dean finally ceased his torture.

 

It’s possible that the lack of pain can be attributed to his Grace—after all, it has sped along his healing process. It’d make sense that it is serving as a buffer between pain and his perception of it.

 

But it’s also possible that this newfound relief comes in the form of an orange bottle, of little white tablets which Castiel has been taking dutifully. Painkillers, he has found, are one of the blessings of human ingenuity.

 

“Y’know, these really are looking a hell of a lot better than they did a week ago,” Dean says as he presses another piece of medical tape over the gauze carefully covering one of Castiel’s wounds. “I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again; whatever mojo you got left? It’s workin’ miracles, man. I’ve never seen anything like this.”

 

“It’s only a fragment of my power,” he says, thinking of the days when he could fell dozens of demons with a wave of his hand. “This is nothing more than the embers.”

 

“Embers or not, it’s frickin’ awesome. Hey, with the way this is going, you might not even have a scar!”

 

A coldness settles over him at the thought.

 

Dean likely means it as an encouragement, but his words send something foreboding skittering down Castiel’s spine. _You might not even have a scar_. What, then, will he have to show for what he was? What proof will he have of the millennia of existence trapped inside of him?

 

_Nothing_ , he thinks helplessly, as Dean finishes with his bandages and begins to gather his supplies. _Your wounds will heal, and you will have nothing._

 

 

_Flightlessness had evolved in many different birds independently_ , the television drones. _Two key differences between flying and flightless birds are the smaller wing bones of flightless birds and the absent or greatly reduced keel on their breastbone._

 

Castiel stares blankly, unblinking eyes fixed on the rolling plains and vast grasslands that flash across the screen. The narrator’s voice is smooth and soothing, regurgitating information that was seared into Castiel’s bones millions of years ago.

 

_Adapting to a cursorial lifestyle causes two inverse morphological changes to occur in the skeleto-muscular system._

 

He doesn’t mind, though. These shows stir a certain nostalgia in him, rapping at that tender place just under his chest without dousing him in grief. He likes hearing about the ostriches, and the bumblebees, and the new species of swamp eel discovered in northeastern India. It’s comforting, if a little tedious.

 

_Cassowaries are solitary birds except during courtship, egg-laying, and sometimes around ample food supplies._

 

Roused from his introspection, Castiel frowns. He doesn’t remember that about cassowaries.

 

Actually, now that he is devoting more thought to cassowaries, he doesn’t remember much about them at all. They’re native to New Guinea, East Nusa Tenggara, the Maluku Islands, and northeastern Australia, but he’s not sure of much else about them. Which is odd, as he knows he was present in New Guinea with Balthazar when they were evolving from the prehistoric _Emuarius_.

 

Not that it matters; Castiel has names of and knowledge regarding all earthen species, extant and extinct, deep within him, only a minuscule portion of a database that would surpass human understanding.

 

But somehow, cassowaries have slipped through the cracks.

 

Perhaps, he thinks with a slow sort of dread, his _human_ mind—for that’s what it is without his Grace, isn’t it?—is incapable of holding his limitless knowledge, like a sponge dunked in a swimming pool and asked to retain its water.

 

_What else have I lost?_ The thought arrives in a moment of panic, and he clenches the lumpy couch cushions in his fist. _What else will I lose?_

 

“Honey, I’m home!”

 

Dean’s voice rings out as the door swings wide—there’s the rustle of plastic, the jangle of keys, but Castiel cannot find it within himself to turn around. _There are two extant species of ostrich,_ he thinks desperately, _and they are the only living members of the genus Struthio in the ratite order of birds_.

 

The door shuts with a thud, and Dean steps into his peripheral vision. The movement draws Castiel’s attention, and he swallows down his panic, turning to look at Dean where he’s divesting himself of the plastic bags which are dangling like Christmas ornaments off the length of his forearms.

 

“We,” he says as he drops the bags onto the floor, grinning proudly up at Castiel, “are gonna have a friggin’ _awesome_ dinner.” He reaches into one of the bags and pulls out a sack of potatoes, which he sets on the counter. “Courtesy of the trusty five-finger discount”—he takes out a plastic packet of some limp, shredded green vegetable—“and the generous stiff who unknowingly lent me his last $50.”

 

Castiel frowns down at him. “That’s immoral.”

 

“Trust me, for a guy like him? It woulda been chump change.”

 

“It’s the principle.”

 

Dean just waves him off, continuing to unload his spoils. He balls the plastic bags up in his fist and shoves them under the sink. “ _Anyway_ ,” he says, leaning against the counter and turning his full attention to Castiel, “I was thinkin’ we’d do something a little special tonight. You know, celebrate your healing process. We’ve been cooped up in here for what? Over a week now? Might as well do somethin’ nice for ourselves.”

 

Dean wants to _celebrate._ The thought makes him wince, and he looks away, but not before he sees Dean’s wide grin falter. He pushes off from the counter. “Aw, come on, don’t be like that. It’ll be fun! We’ll have a couple’a beers, treat it like a real dinner. Besides, I know what you think of those frozen meals. Trust me, this is a whole different ball game.”

 

He thinks of soggy chicken nuggets, Hungry Man dinners just this side of freezer-burnt. “What are you making?”

 

“Burgers! And we’re gonna make hand-cut fries. You’ve never had anything like it; it’s gonna be an epiphany for your tastebuds.”

 

“Tastebuds are physically incapable of experiencing epiphanies,” he grouses, more to be an ass than anything.

 

“Figure of speech, buddy. Just you wait’n see.” Dean ducks down, digging around in the cabinets. There’s a decent amount of banging, and when he stands, he’s got several bowls in his hands, which he sets on the counter. “First real meal, and it’s gonna be a Winchester special.”

 

Castiel frowns. “I’ve tried a wide variety of foods,” he protests. He’s had coffee and skyr and tom kha gai, and has found none of it particularly pleasant.

 

“Thought angels didn’t need to eat.” Dean’s brows are raised, an insufferable look on his face, and Castiel barely restrains himself from rolling his eyes.

 

“They do not,” he agrees reluctantly. “But many of us were curious.” He thinks of the taste of cacao, the way its individual molecules had fought on his tongue. “Of course, it tasted… different… back then.”

 

“Aha! See? Point still stands. First _real_ meal.”

 

Castiel squints, unwilling to concede the point but unable to field a legitimate rebuttal. He supposes that whatever Dean makes can’t be any worse than what he’s already been eating, and even if he doesn’t take the time to prepare this dinner, he will insist upon Castiel eating _something_ , so any attempt at arguing further is useless. Dean has been adamant about his diet, ever since the day Castiel arrived. He’s had little interest in eating, and even less interest in enjoying his food, much to Dean’s chagrin.

 

Its effect has been wearing on him; he’s tired frequently and cold. _Body’s not gettin’ enough energy_ , Dean had said one day, watching Castiel poke at his food. _You should be eating, like, three times that much._ But he can’t help it if eating is just one more tedium of human life, if everything tastes bland and unappetizing.

 

He very much doubts that tonight will be different, but Dean is stubborn, and won’t take no for an answer.

 

“And,” Dean is saying, drawing out the vowel to several times its natural length, “ _you’re_ gonna help me make it.”

 

Castiel narrows his eyes, and Dean barks out a laugh, short and vibrant. “Hey, don’t give me that look. If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years, it’s that this stuff tastes ten times as good when _you_ got a part in makin’ it.”

 

It’s a singularly human concept, Castiel thinks, and one based in nothing akin to fact, but he’s come to expect this of Dean. Truth is what you make it.

 

“Besides, you’ve been staring at those nature docs all day. I mean, your brain must be ready to fall outta your skull by this point.”

 

“What’s wrong with nature documentaries?” he asks sourly, turning back to the television. “I find them enlightening.”

 

“Sure, buddy.” There’s a smile plastered on Dean’s face, and though Castiel cannot quite pinpoint the emotion it broadcasts, he is certain it isn’t entirely genuine. He opens his mouth to reply, but Dean shoulders his words into the space between them before he can formulate a response. “ _Anyway,_ as I was sayin’: you already got a taste of the nerdier side of humanity. Now it’s time to try out somethin’ a little more rewarding.”

 

“That’s debatable.”

 

“Besides, y’gotta learn how to cook,” Dean continues, as though he hasn’t even heard him. Castiel narrows his eyes. “‘Less you wanna live on fast food and instant dinners for the rest of your life.”

 

There’s a pounding taking up residence just behind his eyes. He sighs, and weariness weaves its way into his bones. He gets the sense this argument was decided hours ago, before Castiel was even allowed to become a part of it. “Alright,” he grumbles. “Fine.”

 

“That’s the spirit!” Dean tosses a faded green-and-white checked dish towel onto his shoulder and rubs his hands together. “Come on; you can start by washing the potatoes.”

 

It takes effort to drag himself from the couch, but he does, walking over to the sink. Dean drops a netted bag of root vegetables on the counter at his elbow and reaches over him to snatch a small white brush off the back of the sink, which he offers proudly to Castiel. “Just get the dirt off of ‘em,” he says, reaching for a plastic-wrapped package of meat further down. “I’m gonna start mixing up the burgers.”

 

The sink whines as Castiel turns it on, water hissing out and splashing unsteadily against the empty metal basin. He tears open the bag of potatoes with his hands, relishing the rasp and resistance the plastic gives as he pulls it apart.

 

Behind him, Dean is humming, tuneless and out of key. Castiel is used to it by now—he has almost stopped thinking of his siblings when he hears it. Has almost come to see it as a comfort.

 

Almost.

 

He fumbles inside the bag and pulls out a potato. It’s chalky and knobby, and he can feel flecks of dirt rubbing off onto his fingers. He sticks it under the water, starts to scrub. It’s mindless work, but it begins to consume him.

 

The hush of the water becomes a steady thrum within him, the sharp staccato of each brushstroke against brown skin. He loses himself in it, chases a need that’s jumping higher and higher within him. Something is making a home inside his chest, something small and insistent. He wants to claw it out, to stick it, too, under the stream and scrub its sins away. To purify it.

 

His hands are trembling.

 

He scrubs harder.

 

“You done with those potatoes yet?”

 

Castiel blinks.

 

He’s slow to come back to himself, and when he looks down, his hands are red from cold. The bristles of his brush are dark with dirt, and the potato in his hands is the one with which he had started. Its skin is flecked off in places, white flesh peeking out from underneath.

 

“Dude, is that still your first one?”

 

Dean is hovering just behind him, close enough that Castiel can feel the gentle brush of an arm, a shoulder. He clutches the potato tighter. “I, uh…”

 

“You know, you really only gotta give it a quick once over. Keep goin’ at ‘em like that, there’ll be nothin’ left to cook!” He sounds more amused than anything. Castiel fights to smile, but all he manages is a slight twitch of his lips. He forces his hands to release the potato onto the counter beside the sink and picks up another.

 

Dean pats him on the shoulder once, a firm slap, and his hand lingers there for a moment. There’s a gentle squeeze, a feeling of stability—a tether—and then it is gone. It leaves him steadier, though, for no real reason he can pinpoint, and he goes back to his task a little calmer, a little easier.

 

“Who taught you to cook?” The words escape before he has a chance to think about them, and when he casts a glance over his shoulder, he can see Dean pause, motions slowing in surprise.

 

“Uh, it was kinda a joint effort,” Dean says as he sprinkles some kind of dried herbs into his bowl. “My mom used to cook sometimes. Tomato soup with rice when we were sick. She made a killer pie, I’ll give her that. Meatloaf. Pork chops. The basics, you know?” Dean doesn’t look at Castiel as he talks—he keeps his attention fixed on the bowl in front of him, hands never stilling. Castiel continues to scrub at the potatoes, but it’s mechanical now, just something to do with his hands.

 

“Anyway, she, uh, wasn’t real good at cooking overall, just had a couple’a specialties. My dad, though, man; he was hopeless. Could barely put a sandwich together.” He pauses, and there’s something sad in his smile, some deeper emotion in the slight bow of his head, the hunch of his shoulders. But Castiel still isn’t versed in reading meaning on faces and bodies, isn’t used to gathering all his information from the physical. He says nothing.

 

“But, uh. Between Mom, and Ellen— she’s, um. In one’a those photos you found? Yeah. Actually, this is her recipe.” Dean has rolled up his sleeve and stuffed his fist into the belly of the bowl. The muscles in his arm flex and strain as he squeezes at the beef; it squelches wetly through his fingers. “She always did make a mean burger.”

 

His movements slow into near stillness, like a wind-up toy nearing the end of its life, and his gaze has lifted to fix on a point high and distant. Something tugs at Castiel’s stomach.

 

“Dean?”

 

He blinks, looks down at the bowl, at his hands, and clears his throat. “Yeah, uh, sorry.” A muscle twitches in his jaw as he swallows.

 

Castiel tears his eyes away and rinses another potato. For a while, there is just the sound of the brush, and the water, and the wet squish of ground meat.

 

When Castiel has finished with his potatoes, Dean comes over with a knife. He explains how easiest to slice them, his movements sure and fluid. When he finishes the first potato and it lies in thick, precise rectangles on the cutting board, he hands the knife to Castiel. “Your turn,” he says, turning back to his bowl.

 

Castiel grips the base of the knife the way Dean has shown him; for someone who has been wielding a blade from the moment of his creation, it feels curiously awkward. His first cut slants too far to the right, and the flesh is harder than he would have thought. The blade sticks in it, carving its own path—Castiel attempts to correct it but it stays fast, and he makes another messy slice.

 

He isn’t used to this. When he holds a knife in his hands, he cares not for the cleanness of the cut, the angle that it makes. He strikes to kill.

 

This is different. It’s _difficult_ , he realizes with dismay, staring down at his mangled, lopsided slabs of potato. He looks again at Dean’s example, the sharp corners, the smooth lines, and frustration begins to boil in him. He continues to hack away at the potatoes, attempting to fix the ones he has ruined, trying to make the next batch better. But no matter how carefully he tries, he can’t seem to get it right.

 

He exhales hard through his nose, and then Dean is back, standing at his shoulder. “Hey, what’s—”

 

“I don’t understand,” Castiel says through gritted teeth, cutting off the end of his sentence, “why this is so _difficult._ ”

 

He can feel Dean leaning over for a better look, can sense him searching for words. “Look,” he starts finally, gently encouraging Castiel to set down the knife. His fingers ache when he releases it—he hadn’t realized he’d been gripping it that tightly. “It just takes a little time, is all.”

 

“I’ve been wielding a blade for longer than humanity has existed,” he states flatly, feeling the scowl on his face as though it were etched there in iron.

 

“Yeah, but that’s different.” Dean’s voice is gentle, and Castiel can hear the smile in his voice. Amusement, the thinks. Dean is _amused_.

 

He frowns, because it isn’t funny—he’s frustrated, and angry that he can’t seem to get the hang of simple human things, like routine, and cooking, and _pain_. But when he twists to look at Dean, there’s something warm about his expression, something encouraging, or fond. It sets him off balance, and whatever words he was going to utter die in his throat.

 

“These aren’t even that bad,” Dean says, pushing Castiel’s fries around on the cutting board.

 

He narrows his eyes, suspicious and disbelieving, and when Dean looks up at him, he laughs. “Okay, okay, they’re a little bad. But they’re still gonna taste awesome. Just… try to make ‘em a little more uniform.” Castiel frowns down at his potatoes, at the three whole ones he has left, and Dean claps him on the back. He can feel his smile without looking at him.

 

“You’ll get the hang of it, I promise. You shoulda seen mine the first couple’a times I tried. It’s kind of an acquired skill.”

 

“Maybe it’s a skill I don’t care to acquire,” Castiel shoots back, glaring down at the fries. Dean laughs again, and Castiel looks to him with a frown. From what he’s seen so far, cooking is tedious. A waste of time, just like eating. A moment passes, and when Castiel doesn’t make a move to start back up again, Dean gently takes the knife from his hand and neatly finishes the job.

 

“You’ll get it next time,” he promises once he’s done and the fries are bathing in crackling oil.

 

 

“And that’s all she wrote!” Dean claps his hands together, looking down at the plates in front of him with barely-restrained glee. His gaze snaps up to Castiel, eyebrows raised in question. “So, you ready to have your socks knocked off?”

 

Castiel glances down at the burgers, the toasted buns, the healthy serving of fries heaped on each plate. He won’t deny that the scent is… intoxicating. The moment Dean had thrown the burgers in a hot pan and the warm, savory smell had curled up and through the kitchenette, his mouth had begun to water.

 

Not that he wants to admit it.

 

But Dean is grinning knowingly at him, smug and self-satisfied, and he swipes the plates off the counter and heads toward the couch, only breaking eye contact when he’s halfway there. Castiel’s own mouth twitches upward in response.

 

“Hey, do me a favor,” Dean calls back as he seats himself on the right side of the sofa, sinking into the cushions ungracefully and with an unchecked grunt. “Grab two beers outta the fridge? Should be a couple six packs on the middle shelf.”

 

Castiel does. The glass is cool in his hands, and he can’t help but think that it will make an excellent contrast to the heat and salt and grease that Dean has set on the coffee table.

 

He sits on the other side of the couch, passing Dean one of the beers, and twists the cap off his own. He looks down into the neck, but the amber of the glass is too dark, and he can’t see its contents clearly. He takes a slow sip—it’s cold and unexpectedly bitter. He makes a face.

 

Dean chuckles. “Not a fan?”

 

Castiel isn’t sure. He drinks again, and now that he’s expecting it, the taste is… surprisingly agreeable. He takes a third sip. “It’s… not bad.”

 

“Not bad, huh? Man, I remember my first beer.” He shakes his head, smiling at some thought blooming in his head which Castiel cannot see. “I was… thirteen? Fourteen? We just got back from a hunt, me’n Dad’n Bobby. One of my first real ones, actually. It was just one demon, but I remember thinkin’ it was so badass. Anyway, we got back to the car after we ganked that sonuvabitch, and Dad was pullin’ beers outta the cooler in the back. It wasn’t even cold. And I thought it tasted like piss, but I drank the whole damn thing.”

 

His smile turns slightly, edged with some emotion Castiel can’t place, and he looks down at the beer clutched between his hands. “Anyway. This stuff’s got miles on the cheap shit we used to get back then, so count yourself lucky.” He takes a long drink and wipes his mouth on his sleeve. “Enough about that; you gonna try that burger sometime this century?”

 

Castiel tears his gaze away from Dean and looks down at his plate. Slowly, he picks up the burger, lifting it to examine it from the side. It’s thick and meaty, cheese and tomato and lettuce and pickles poking through from under the bun. He squeezes it down slightly, and fat glistens, dribbling back onto the plate in clear droplets. It should be disgusting, but he finds his mouth watering.

 

“You’re killin’ me, Cas. Quit giving it bedroom eyes and take a goddamn bite.”

 

He does.

 

It’s… incredible.

 

Flavor explodes on his tongue, and he moans involuntarily around the mouthful. He chews slowly, savoring the taste. When he swallows, he realizes that he has closed his eyes at some point, and he opens them to look down at the burger in awe.

 

“Good, huh?” Dean is grinning wide now, and when Castiel looks over, he thinks he sees a subtle flush riding high on the apples of his cheeks. He nods solemnly, returning his attention to the burger.

 

“These make me very happy.”

 

Dean laughs, biting into his own burger. “Dude, right? Burgers are god’s gift to man.” He realizes what he’s said and freezes for a moment, eyes sliding guiltily over to Castiel. “Or, uh… you know.”

 

He isn’t bothered. Blasphemy is as common in the 21st century as anything else, and besides, a small part of him wants to agree. He takes another bite of burger, inhaling deeply. It’s just as good as the first.

 

“So,” Dean says as he stuffs two fries into his mouth, talking around the food in his cheek. “Eating’s not so bad after all, huh?”

 

“No, it’s still incredibly tedious,” Castiel says honestly. “The amount of maintenance required by the human form is staggering. The need to relieve yourself especially is much more time consuming than I had thought.”

 

Dean chokes on his mouthful of beer, and he pounds on his chest several times, spluttering. “Dude, TMI.”

 

Castiel doesn’t know what that means, and he doesn’t ask.

 

“Can we, uh… keep the bathroom talk for _after_ we’re done eating? Or, better yet, let’s just skip it entirely.”

 

“It’s a natural bodily function, Dean, I don’t—”

 

“Just… trust me on this one, Cas.”

 

He squints, uncertain what, exactly, is wrong with what he’s said—it’s a natural byproduct of eating and drinking, after all—but he doesn’t protest. There are some things, he’s found, that are easier to accept than investigate.

 

They lapse into silence, and Castiel reaches down for a fry. They’re thick and crisp, salt rubbing against the pads of his fingers like grains of sand. It crunches when he bites, revealing the satisfyingly soft, hot center. He makes a small noise of approval, and Dean grins again, shaking his head.

 

“Man, you’ve really been missing out. We gotta get you, like… a crash course in comfort food.”

 

Castiel wants to protest, to stick firm in his stance that the body’s need for sustenance is detrimental and annoying, but each bite, each sip, each crunch of lettuce and crumble of beef is drawing him further and further away from his earlier convictions. Perhaps there is something to be said for the simplicity of human senses, for the ability to perceive the whole and not merely the sum of its parts.

 

Dean is carrying on the conversation, oblivious to the fact that he’s left Castiel far behind, gesturing with his hands as he describes the various iterations of french fries through the years. “That diner… Hot damn. Best friggin’ shoestring fries I’ve ever had, I swear.” He takes a long pull from the bottle of beer, and Castiel’s gaze catches on the wrap of his lips around its mouth, the bob of his throat as he swallows. “Tell ya what: next time we got reason to head up there, we’re goin’.”

 

He moves as he speaks, crossing to the fridge to pull two more bottles out of its depths, one of which he passes to Castiel. He takes it, although he has not quite finished the first; there’s an inch or two of rapidly-warming liquid still collected at the bottom of it. He follows Dean’s lead and drains it.

 

Their conversation is oddly easy, flowing steady and sure, an unhurried current carrying its water languidly downstream. Dean is glowing with life, detailing the differences between steak fries and curly fries and the many varieties that lie in between, painting their merits and drawbacks in the stale living room air. He knows the best places to get each type, which ones taste better with ketchup, with a chocolate milkshake, with a cold beer.

 

Castiel tells him about the way potatoes used to be regarded as devil’s apples, how common folk feared them, disliked the fact that they grew underground. _The fear of the unknown,_ he says as he nears the dregs of his third beer, _has plagued humanity from the beginning_.

 

Dean responds with a self-satisfied smirk, _Can’t blame a man for being cautious,_ and they float back to shallower waters, to talk of pickle chips and hot apple pie.

 

He loses track of time. As an angel, he possessed no understanding of it as anything but cyclical, constructed. It simply was. But tonight it is linear. It flies past, dragging the sun down with it until the world outside the window is dark and they are bathed in the weak yellow glow of electric lights, picking like birds on the remnants of fries that lay scattered like bones on their plates, the half-eaten carcasses of second and third helpings.

 

As their conversation draws into a lull, Castiel finds his focus fixed on Dean. He can’t stop watching him—the radiance of his smile, the way his eyes crinkle when he laughs. Castiel’s limbs feel heavy and warm, and he does not try to hide his gaze; he is sinking into himself. Dean licks the salt from his fingers, and he itches to taste it himself. The need is foreign in him, rising sudden and unannounced in the depths of his belly, and he dismisses it with some difficulty. He thinks of Gabriel, of Balthazar—of the way they used to watch these things, the pucker of a woman’s lips, the sharp curve of a man’s smile, the strength in his hands. It had seemed so inconceivable then. Now, he thinks he is beginning to understand.

 

As always, the memory of his siblings washes over him in cold waves. But he has found that the tide is gentler, now—it still pulls hard, icy fingers wrapping around his shoulders and threatening to push him down, but recently, he has been able to keep his head above the surface. He looks to Dean and clings to the present.

 

“What?” Dean asks, the smile on his face sliding slowly toward a frown. “Do I have something on my face?”

 

Castiel realizes he has been staring. He blinks and looks away, reaching for his beer—his fourth? Fifth?—for want of something to do. It’s an infuriatingly human instinct.

 

“Cas?”

 

“Yes,” he says, unable to find the right words to patch the rifts that have opened between them. “I— Sorry, I just—”

 

Dean sets a hand on his knee and squeezes gently. “Hey, don’t worry about it.”

 

His kindness sits uneasily in Castiel’s stomach. He has a sudden, overwhelming urge to reach a fist down his throat and tear it out, to cast it on the coffee table in front of them. _I don’t need this_ , he’d say. _I don’t want this._ Because isn’t this precisely what drove him to disobey? This goodness that sits at the heart of every human creature, this faith, this trust, this love. His Father couldn’t see it, or didn’t want to, or couldn’t bear to see what he had inflicted upon it, and his siblings hadn’t cared to find out which it was.

 

He sees it in every lopsided smile, every glance, every gentle touch. It’s been under a month but already Castiel is learning to see without his Grace, and in a way, what he finds is even more profound. He’s viewing humanity through humanity’s means. He’s seeing the brightness of their souls in the way a smile lights up Dean’s face, finding purity in an open look, vibrancy in bright eyes and easy step. He sees the insinuation of scars, of burdens, all layered through touch and smell and sight. It’s enlightening.

 

It’s terrifying.

 

He looks at Dean and sees in him every reason he fell. Every reason he lost.

 

The knowledge is a stone in his throat. It slides slowly into his stomach and sits there, heavy and foreign.

 

Castiel can feel Dean’s gaze on him, the careful calculation happening just behind his eyes. His hand is still on Castiel’s knee, and he looks down at it, attempting to sort the muddled eddy of his thoughts into some kind of order.

 

“Ground control,” Dean says, and his tone is light, but there’s something lurking just under it. “Calling Major Cas— Come in, Cas.”

 

He feels himself frown, his muscles slow to respond, and despite his confusion, there is something fond unfurling in his stomach. “I don’t understand that reference.”

 

“Yeah, I know you don’t.” Dean’s hand slides off his leg, and he stands, gathering plates and bottles from the coffee table. He makes a noise that’s both a sigh and a groan, the sound of a stagnant body urging itself to motion. “Now come on and help me do the dishes.”

 

 

Cleaning up is just as tiresome as it seems. Dean is stationed at the sink, his hands buried in soapy water, dirty pots and pans and mixing bowls stacked on the counter beside him. The air is still thick with heat from the stove, still threaded with the scents of oil and fat and salt. It’s extraordinarily domestic.

 

“This is the less fun side of cooking,” Dean says as he hands Castiel one of the plates. It drips onto the countertop before he has the chance to dry it. “But it’s not so bad. Kinda relaxing, actually.”

 

Castiel has never been one to find menial tasks anything other than what they are, but he can’t deny that there’s something appealing about losing himself in the drag of the towel over dishes, the slow wipe of cotton over beads of water. His mind is simpler, now, and he is learning how to occupy it, how to tune out the thoughts to which he doesn’t want to devote time or attention.

 

At his side, Dean plunges his hands back into the murky water. He draws up another plate, rubbing over it in smooth circles with a painfully yellow sponge. Soap bubbles froth between his fingers, consuming his hands and forming a glaze on the surface of the plate. Castiel fixates on it, on the repetitive motion and slick lather.

 

“I, uh. I wanted to thank you.” Dean doesn’t look at him. There’s an awkward lilt to his words, as there always seems to be when he delves into any honest emotion. Castiel has come to expect this. “For tonight. This was the best night I’ve had in god knows how long, so. I know you weren’t exactly thrilled about it and all, but thanks for goin’ along with it.”

 

He rinses his plate under the stream of water and hands it over. When Castiel takes it, their eyes meet, and he feels the corner of his mouth tugging upwards. “You’re welcome. It ended up being much more enjoyable than I had originally anticipated.”

 

Dean chuckles. His mouth pulls into a smile, then, and he bumps him gently with his shoulder. “Yeah? Told you those burgers were somethin’ else. I knew that deep down, you had good taste.”

 

Just the thought nearly has him salivating, despite the fullness in his belly. Fullness to the point of discomfort, actually—a sensation he is entirely unused to and of which he isn’t fond. “Yes,” he says, and his voice grumbles low over the words with a rough reverence he himself is surprised to hear. “I found them to be… extremely satisfying.”

 

“Like I said: those microwave dinners? Man, that shit doesn’t even come close!”

 

“No, they don’t,” he agrees, setting his plate on top of the other. “Actually, nothing I’ve consumed comes close. Eating is… a very different experience, as a human.” The words taste bitter on his tongue. He swallows around them.

 

“Oh, yeah? How so?”

 

“Everything doesn’t taste like molecules, for one.” That rouses a chuckle, and Castiel feels the pressure on his chest lighten infinitesimally. “It was overwhelming,” he admits. “It was disgusting.”

 

“Uh, yeah, sounds like it. Molecules? The fuck does that even taste like, anyway?”

 

“Terrible.”

 

Dean laughs again, and the sound rolls through the room. “Sorry, man, just… you should see your face.” He’s smiling, open and soft, and his gaze is gentle although somewhat unfocused. They’re both loose with drink, Castiel thinks, the alcohol dragging words out of their mouths like putty.

 

“Consider yourself lucky,” he says without turning away, the line of his mouth turning solemn in intentionally overdrawn sincerity. “And be content in knowing that the human sense of taste is… far superior to its angelic counterpart.” He is still drying the same bowl, he realizes, dragging his towel over and over its plastic surface. He sets it aside. “The concept of food tasting savory or sweet… I understood it in theory, but not in practice.”

 

“Dude. That’s…” He doesn’t seem to have words. “That sucks.”

 

Castiel finds himself nodding. “It does. Did.”

 

“Well, good thing you got me to enlighten you. Comin’ off a couple million years of _molecules,_ those burgers must've been like… a nuclear flavor bomb.”

 

An apt metaphor, Castiel thinks, if somewhat insensitive.

 

“They were always one of Ellen’s best dishes. Took me years to wear her down enough to share it with me. Woman locks up her recipes tighter than Fort Knox, I’m tellin’ ya.”

 

Ellen. The name catches in Castiel’s mind, and he glances over, unearthing its context from the back of his mind. “The woman in the—”

 

“The picture, yeah,” Dean confirms. “She used to own a bar pretty close to here—The Roadhouse. It, um. Burned down couple years ago. She and her daughter were inside.”

 

_His flesh is searing from his bones—his Grace is burning up from the inside—he’s—_

 

He peels the memory off of him; beneath it, the exposed tissue needles and stings. The phantom heat still lingers his limbs, in the hollow of his chest. He reaches for his beer, which is sitting off to the side by the stove, and drinks long.

 

“That’s… horrible,” he says finally, when his mouth no longer feels stuffed with cotton. Dean blows out a hard breath through his nose.

 

“Yeah.” He’s holding a spatula under the running water, motionless. Castiel watches the stream splash against the plastic, run to the sides and fall down into the pool of bubbly water beneath it. After a moment, Dean blinks. He hands the spatula to Castiel. “This used to be one of her specialties. Everything she made was good, though, and it was the place to be for a long time. For hunters, I mean. Cold beer, good food, good company…” He trails off and reaches for a knife, scrubbing it with more force than Castiel thinks is necessary. “We used to go up there all the time, me’n Sam’n Mom and Dad. From back when we were kids.”

 

Castiel tries to picture it, Dean small and compact and just as boisterous, dragging a brother along behind him, free of worry lines and scars and the dirt that seems ever-embedded under his fingernails. He wonders just how long Dean had before life came in and ripped the throat out of his chance at happiness.

 

If he had any time at all.

 

“Losing them must have been difficult,” he offers. Dean thrusts the knife under the spray, and water shoots off its flat surface, spattering Dean’s shirt, Castiel’s arm, the countertop. Dean barely seems to notice, though he does twist it to the side, and the water calms.

 

“It was awful,” he says, and he doesn’t offer anything further.

 

Castiel is quiet too, his thoughts occupied once again by his family. He wonders what reason Raphael and Michael will give for his banishment—whether they will embellish and mold his story. Craft him into a villain. He wonders whether his siblings will believe it, whether Anael and Balthazar’s opinions of him will taint and mold.

 

There’s little he can do about it; that is out of his hands now.

 

When the silence has thickened between them, Castiel says, “I’m sorry.” The words are inadequate and always will be, but he wants Dean to know he feels this sorrow, that he knows how strong Dean must be to have borne it all this time. He wants to reassure him that his friends are likely at peace, resting in Heaven’s eternal paradise, but the sentiment feels hollow somehow, the words false. Instead, he says, “I know how it feels to lose your brethren.”

 

Dean looks at him then, a small frown etched onto his face. Assessment, Castiel thinks. That is what he would call this expression.

 

“Guess you would,” he says finally. He reaches down into the sink and unplugs it. The water gurgles as it goes down, and the noise is loud in this small space. “You close to them?”

 

“Yes and no.” He doesn’t know how to explain his relationship with the Host to Dean, how to pare down something so complex and unfathomable into human words and concepts. His love for his siblings spans time and dimension; they were a part of him, crafted from the same power, the same light. “It’s… difficult to quantify.”

 

Dean is patient. He doesn’t interject; he just leans a hip against the counter and waits.

 

“We were all close, in a way. All family. All connected—we, um. I suppose telepathy is a close enough interpretation of it. I heard their voices constantly—their love, their fears, their thoughts—and they heard mine.”

 

He hadn’t known how much he would miss it until it was gone.

 

“But there were several I was closer with than others. Mostly those in my garrison. We served under Gabriel, until he disappeared. There was Anna, our commander. She, um. Fell several hundred years ago. Anael and Balthazar. Uriel.” Castiel reconsiders. “Well, until he betrayed me.”

 

“Fuck that guy.”

 

He feels his mouth pulling into a small smile.

 

“So what happens now?” Dean asks after a moment. He crosses his arms over his chest, radiating uncertainty. “Do you like… get to visit? Or something?”

 

“No.” The word grows teeth. They gnaw at Castiel’s heart. “In all likelihood, I’ll never see any of them again.”

 

The sentence hangs in the air, takes on a life of its own. It presses back against him, suffocating in its size, its truth. He feels small in comparison, ephemeral and fragile and already broken. When he looks at Dean, his eyes are soft and sad.

 

“I’m sorry, Cas. Ain’t nothing that hurts like losing a brother.”

 

His eyes dip down. Dean’s sympathy does not lessen his grief, but it eases its ache, as though he has shouldered some of the load. This, he thinks, could be the appeal of a family. Of friends. Of companions to carry you when you can no longer walk. He was part of a bigger family, one to which no human can hope to compare, but there’s something raw and intimate about this. Castiel thinks of eulogies, of the stories he has watched humanity cultivate of their ancestors, the tales passed down from generation to generation like prized heirlooms. The fear of forgetting.

 

He wonders who he will forget.

 

He wonders if when his time comes, he, too, will be forgotten.

 

 

When the dishes are cleaned and dried and put back where they belong, and the kitchenette has been returned to its more or less orderly state, Dean grabs two more beers from the fridge (they’re nearing the end of their supply, Castiel notes with surprise) and ushers them over to the couch. He kicks his feet up on the coffee table and crosses them at the ankle, leans back against the cushions and rubs contentedly at his stomach.

 

“We should watch a movie or somethin’,” he says after a moment, tilting his head to the side to look at Castiel. “Somethin’ funny. I’ve had enough depressing bullshit for tonight.”

 

He says this matter-of-fact, one corner of his mouth curling up to let Castiel in on the fact that it’s jest, not accusation. It’s all right, though. He isn’t offended; he, too, has had enough _depressing bullshit._ For more than one night, actually.

 

“I know!” Dean says, sitting suddenly upright. His feet fall from the coffee table, and he leans forward, a self-satisfied grin stretched easily across his face. “ _Spaceballs_. You ever seen it?”

 

“No.”

 

“Oh, man, you’re gonna love it. Fuckin’ hilarious. It’s a parody of _Star Wars_ , kinda.”

 

“ _Star Wars_?” Castiel frowns. He remembers the DVDs from the bookcase, and his gaze flickers there now.

 

Dean groans, loud and disappointed. “No way. Don’t tell me you’ve never seen _Star Wars_!” He searches Castiel’s face for a moment, and whatever he finds has him shaking his head. “You’ve really been missing out. Okay, well, _Spaceballs_ is gonna have to wait. Because tonight, we’re starting your movie education with _Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope_.”

 

He’s not sure what that means, but Dean seems to be excited about it. He claps his hands together, grinning. “Need some popcorn,” he says, pushing up from the couch and crossing to the kitchenette, where he rifles through several cabinets.

 

“We just ate,” Castiel protests, but Dean pays him no heed. He pulls a small plastic-wrapped square out of one cabinet and tears it open, unfolding it into a rectangle and sticking it in the microwave. He balls the plastic in his fist and throws it away.

 

“All part of being human, Cas,” he says as he pulls a stick of butter out of the fridge. “You eat until y’think you’re gonna puke, lay on the couch in agony for a few hours, then once you start feeling better, you do it all over again. Trust me, this is worth it. Can’t watch a movie without popcorn!”

 

Self-flagellation, Castiel thinks. That’s what this is. Some absurd masochism. He thinks of priests knelt before the altar, slicing into their backs with whips as they cried out for God. He wonders what purpose this ritual serves.

 

The popcorn has begun to burst in the microwave, snapping dully against the paper bag. Sated though he is, Castiel can’t help but appreciate the scent that issues forth from it, buttery and salty and mouth-watering.

 

When Dean comes back, he sets the bowl of popcorn on the coffee table. Castiel eyes it as he turns the movie on, and his attention doesn’t go unnoticed. Dean arches a brow and drops himself onto the couch right beside him, close enough that their thighs touch. He leans forward and draws the bowl onto his lap.

 

Castiel feels his pulse leap. He looks down at where their legs are pressed together, denim to cotton. Dean’s thigh is warm and solid, and Castiel feels every minute shift, every jump of muscle under skin. Something spikes low in his belly; warmth unfurls in him at the contact.

 

Dean stuffs his hand into the bowl and shoves a fistful of popcorn into his mouth, groaning exaggeratedly around it. He watches Castiel as he does so, a knowing smirk on his face. “Ah, yeah,” he says, mouth still half-full. “That hits the spot.”

 

It’s obscene. Disgusting, really. Castiel wrinkles his nose as Dean chews on another mouthful. In response, he smirks even wider. “You’re really missin’ out, man,” he says, wiping his fingers on his jeans. He picks up the bowl and leans closer into Castiel, so that their entire sides are pressed tightly together. Something in him flips at the proximity, and his pulse bites at his throat.

 

Dean dangles the bowl under Castiel’s nose, shaking it slightly so that the scent of hot, buttery salt wafts invitingly up from its depths. “Come on,” he wheedles, mixing the popcorn up with his hands, raising some to the level of Castiel’s lips as though to feed him, “you know you want some.”

 

Fondness curls itself around Castiel’s ribcage. Dean is irritating and stubborn and overwhelmingly childish, but there’s something endearing and innocent about it, something joyous and unbridled, like an animal freed of captivity, let out of its cage to bask in the sun for the first time in its life. Dean is radiant like that.

 

Castiel wishes he could see his soul. He imagines it would be beautiful, lit up and swollen with this emotion.

 

But he will have to settle for green eyes and a cheeky smile, a handful of popcorn, a DVD on an old, busted television set.

 

He glowers, though there is no heat behind it, and reaches down to take a few kernels of popcorn. They’re slick with butter, and the oil stays behind on his fingertips when he pops them into his mouth.

 

It’s nothing in comparison to the burgers from earlier, but he can’t deny that it’s delicious. The light, airy crunch. The heaviness of the butter, the bite of the salt. He makes a noise of approval and reaches for a few more. Dean pumps a fist into the air in triumph.

 

“Hell yes!” He grins, pulling the bowl to rest between them, balanced on both their thighs. “I fucking knew it!”

 

Castiel arches an eyebrow in lieu of a response, but if anything, it only serves to heighten Dean’s joy. He sweeps up popcorn in his palm, fist curled around the yellow kernels, and drops several into his mouth, grinning while he chews. “Y’know, Cas, we are gonna make a connoisseur outta you yet. Started out a little rough, I’ll give ya that, but it’s five-star meals from here on out.” He frowns. “Well, until thirty bucks’n the five-finger discount run out.”

 

The television catches his attention then, and he hits Castiel on the shoulder with the back of his hand. “Okay, keep it down, here we go,” he says, and Castiel doesn’t protest, although he does note that it has been Dean, not him, making the majority of the noise.

 

It’s a strange film, from what Castiel can tell. Set in the future, although it is unlike any future he has ever seen. He has had peeks, time being cyclical as it is, and himself being a creature beyond time and dimension, but that knowledge is fading slowly from the banks of his memories. It’s all right, he thinks distantly, as the men on the screen wield swords of vibrant light and speak with creatures through animalistic growls and clicks. That understanding is too complex for any human brain to grasp. It’s probably for the best that it’s trickling slowly from him, water leaching from one of many leaks.

 

But Dean seems to be enjoying it. His body is loose, free of tension or unease, but his attention is rapt on the television screen. At times, Castiel catches him mouthing along to certain lines, laughing before a joke is made (although, to be honest, some of them slip entirely over him without finding any purchase. Perhaps Dean is laughing at the correct time, and the punchlines are simply beyond his comprehension).

 

Dean’s enthrallment spikes Castiel’s interest, and he returns his attention to the television. He watches closely, tries to unpack the meaning in this story, these characters. And he does.

 

He sees his own struggles, sees the difficulties of faith, the necessity of repentance, of sacrifice. The hope of salvation. Man’s battle with the eternal, the divine. It’s all there, hidden under layers of metaphor and technological facades. As the story unspools, he finds himself dragged under by it all.

 

He almost forgets Dean.

 

He is consumed.

 

When the film finishes, credits crawling like white ants up the surface of the screen, Dean turns toward him. “So?” he asks, brows raised high. “Good, right?”

 

Castiel finds himself nodding. He is watching the television still, unable to look away although the excitement is long past. “At first I found it odd,” he admits. “But its meaning is much deeper than I had originally anticipated. The concept of the Force is… extremely Zoroastrian.”

 

Dean snorts. He sips at his whiskey (they’d switched over at some point, having exhausted their supply of beer) and shakes his head. “You’re really somethin’ else, you know that?”

 

“And I liked the Skywalker,” he continues. “His struggle to adhere to the Jedi standards, his war against emotion.” It resonates with him. He sees his own strife in it, his own conflict.

 

“Sure,” Dean says, but he’s grinning, and the lines of his face are soft. “Whatever you say, man. Open to interpretation, and all that.” He pulls his phone out of his pocket and brings the screen to life. “Still early,” he says, and he looks to Castiel. But he’s not sure what Dean means by that. He looks over, frowning, and attempts to find the meaning lurking behind his words. “Wanna watch another?”

 

By the time the second movie is halfway through, the night has begun to swim. The whiskey is much stronger than the beer; it burns down the back of his throat and lays like fire in his stomach. It makes his limbs heavy, his mind fuzzy and delayed. Dean appears to be equally affected. Moreso, even. His eyes are glazed, his movements slow and somewhat uncoordinated.

 

Despite his earlier interest, Castiel finds himself unable to focus on the film. His thoughts are dragged away to Dean, to nothingness.

 

The second movie melts into the third.

 

At some point, Dean has put his arm around the back of the couch, and Castiel is so close to him that he is nearly cradled in the crook of it, his shoulder tucked underneath Dean’s armpit. This close, he radiates heat like a furnace; Castiel is drawn toward it. He likes touch, he thinks as Dean drops his arm to Castiel’s shoulder, his fingers splaying over the ball of it. He likes feeling the weight of Dean’s body against his own, the gentle but firm press of his hand, the heat of his flesh. It’s different than feeling each whorl of his fingerprint, each hair on his body, each bump on his skin. More intimate. More personal.

 

Dean’s fingers are rubbing gently at the meat of Castiel’s shoulder; the movement drags at the cotton of his hoodie, his t-shirt. It’s repetitive and soothing, and he leans closer into Dean’s warmth.

 

He looks up. Dean is already looking back at him, his face inches away. He isn’t smiling anymore—he’s watching Castiel, and there’s something different about the way his eyes lock on Castiel’s features, something entrancing about the openness of his expression. There are a thousand words written on the lines of Dean’s face, if only Castiel cares to read them. There are freckles smattered across his nose, and his eyes glint with blue from the reflection of the television’s light.

 

His hand has moved from Castiel’s shoulders. It lays on his thigh now, a weight he feels like a brand through the thin material of his sweatpants.

 

Dean leans forward.

 

It takes an age. When Dean closes his eyes, Castiel examines the spread of soft lashes against his cheek, the way his mouth hangs open an inch, lips parted and seeking. His heart spasms in his chest; desire rolls through him like a river.

 

No part of him is free from want.

 

He has never wanted to kiss someone before. He has never felt the need, the urge, never even felt the curiosity. This is something new. Something born out of his humanity.

 

The thought twists in him—would he want this, if he were still an angel? He doesn’t know. It cools the heat, douses his desire like cold wind extinguishing a candle. Dean is close now; his breath is hot on Castiel’s skin.

 

He turns his head.

 

Dean’s lips press, soft and warm, just at the corner of his mouth. He feels him exhale against his cheek, feels his hand tighten on his thigh. Castiel is holding his breath. The moment stretches between them like taffy, and Castiel doesn’t know what to do.

 

His heart is pounding a furious rhythm against his ribcage, and he feels heat blossoming from the point where Dean’s mouth touches his, spreading like poison through his veins. Everything seems to be happening from a distance, or maybe in a dream. It holds the same fluid uncertainty, the same surrealism he has come to associate with sleeping. Dean’s breath smells like whiskey and butter. His lips are warm and dry, and his nose nudges against Castiel’s cheek.

 

Dean pulls away.

 

The air feels cooler in his absence, flooding in to occupy the space he has abandoned. He doesn’t go far, several inches at most, and when he opens his eyes, he looks down at Castiel’s lips. Castiel is afraid he will say something, will frown or question him or try to kiss him again, but he does none of these things. After a moment, the humming tension between them snaps. Dean reaches for his glass of whiskey and downs the rest of it, setting it back on the coffee table with a definitive thunk. He turns back to the television, but his hand stays on Castiel’s thigh, and he doesn’t move away.

 

Castiel cannot go back to the movie. Leia and Luke and Han Solo mean nothing to him now, not in the face of this. His mind is swimming with the memory of Dean’s lips on his, the nudge of his nose, the small scar just above his eyebrow. He can still feel Dean’s skin against his, can still feel the hot puff of his breath. It’s playing over and over and over in his mind. He can’t turn it off.

 

He wants it again.

 

He hates that he wants it again.

 

His thoughts weave in circles around themselves, vague and cyclical and unhelpful. He tries to grab at them, to hold one tight and examine it closer, but he is full and tired and the room is spinning. He sits there for some time, Dean’s hand heavy on his thigh, thinking about everything and nothing.

 

When he looks up, the television is fixed on the DVD’s main menu, the same short clip of music repeating over and over. There is a weight on his shoulder—Dean. Castiel twists his head and looks over; Dean has fallen asleep at some point, and is slumped against his body. His hair tickles the skin of Castiel’s neck, his breathing slow and even. Something swells in his chest.

 

He looks back to the television. He feels untethered, like he is somewhere apart from time. His head is still spinning—or is he feeling the motion of the earth on its axis? He doesn’t know.

 

Castiel drops his head to the couch. He looks up at the ceiling, at the expanse of white paint marred here or there with a hairline crack. He feels the weight of Dean’s head on his shoulder, the press of Dean’s body against his.

 

Slowly, with the television still crooning in the background, sleep drags him down.

 

 

When he returns to consciousness, it’s with a great deal of pain.

 

The first thing he feels is an incessant pounding in his head, as though his brain is too large for his skull and intends to burst free. His back aches, a dull throb that pulses in time with the beat of his heart. His eyelids are gummy, and when he finally opens them, he has to squint to ward off the light coming in through the window.

 

Overall, he feels—as Dean would say— _like shit_.

 

The second thing he notices is that Dean is lying in his lap. His head is pillowed on Castiel’s thighs, and he has an arm slung around Castiel’s waist. Affection curls lazily in his stomach. Dean’s hair is rumpled, sticking up in the back at odd angles, and his mouth is slightly ajar, pink lips parted and mashed against Castiel’s leg. The morning light halos him in cold, pale hues, a sharp contrast to the warm gold of his hair, the red plaid of his flannel.

 

The memory of Dean’s lips against his cheek sifts through his thoughts, and his easy fondness recedes. In its place, a sourness forms in the back of his throat.

 

When he can no longer ignore the dull pain radiating through his body, he extricates himself from Dean’s grip and slides off the side of the couch, pushing himself over the armrest in an attempt to keep from jostling Dean. There’s a moment when he readjusts, nestling deeper into the cushions, and Castiel fears he may wake, but he makes a soft, sleepy noise and stills again.

 

Castiel lets out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding.

 

He goes into the kitchen and pours himself a glass of water, chugs it down in one long drink. Movement is beginning to shake the stiffness from his muscles, but his back is still a dull ache, and his head feels too big for his body. The light is brighter in the kitchen, streaking in from the window just above the sink. Each ray of sunlight is like an ice pick stabbing through his eyes and into his brain, and he squints against the pain.

 

This is a hangover.

 

The realization strikes him full force, and he glares down at his empty glass of water. He has a hangover. And it _hurts._

 

It’s utterly, infuriatingly _human_.

 

He’s gripped with a sudden urge to hurl his glass at the wall, to hear it smash and watch the bits of glass shatter and fall in a spray across the floor. He curls his fingers tighter around it and shoves it under the faucet instead, watching the water swirl inside. He sips at it slower this time, trying to wash down the thick, dirty feeling that has settled over his skin, his organs. But he needs more than water to wash himself clean.

 

He has never felt more human.

 

His skin crawls with it. He thinks back to how saccharine last night had been, how mundane and domestic. He can’t believe he allowed himself to be so loose, so opposite of what he once was. He’s a celestial being—a warrior of God—and he spent the night fawning over burgers.

 

He had held himself with poise once, had been immovable as steel. He had forgotten, for a moment. Had disregarded his true nature and allowed himself to believe that he could be content with this, with flesh and blood in place of holy fury, divine power. Shame rakes nails down his back.

 

He cannot believe how low he has fallen.

 

He will never be content with this, he thinks wildly. He will never be satisfied with the forty-some years he has left, with pissing and shitting and sleeping, with joints that pop and crack and eyes that cannot see in the absence of light. He will never be content with walking instead of flying, with breathing and showering and _Star Wars_ , popcorn and burgers and saggy couches.

 

He misses his wings.

 

He longs for flight, to feel the wind whistling through his feathers. The Grace that burned through his veins, the power that surged within him. Once, he could smite a room full of demons with a single thought. Now he can barely best one startled human.

 

Now, his life is limited to a mobile home—a tiny kitchenette, an old living room, a busted sofa.

 

He feels it pressing in on him; the walls slide closer and closer, the roof descends. Soon there will be no room left for him, small as he is, and he will be crushed here, in this mass of wood and plastic and metal.

 

He’s trapped.

 

He’s ensnared.

 

Castiel drops the glass into the sink and rushes to the door. He wrenches it open and staggers out into the sunlight, sweat beading at his brow. The air is cool here, and it soothes the wild thing burgeoning within him. The world extends before him, painted dimly by the light of dawn. He wonders how much of it he will see now that he is without his wings. Will he ever return to Laos? Antarctica? Siena?

 

It’s unlikely.

 

For weeks, all he has seen is this tiny square of Nebraska. It’s probable that it is all he will see for several more weeks. Several months, maybe. Years. The thought clenches inside him.

 

The world has widened since he fell. It has slipped out of his reach.

 

He looks to the sky, a nearly colorless blue streaked with thin tufts of clouds almost transparent in their insubstantiality. He thinks back to one of the first nights he was here, when he had looked to the night sky and thought of his siblings, had watched stars wilt and die.

 

He clambers onto the railing and drags his body onto the roof.

 

It’s an awkward affair, more clumsy than the last time he tried it. His limbs are still heavy with the after-effects of drink, and it makes him slow, uncoordinated. But he manages, and he comes to stand on unsteady legs. He stays there for a moment, heart stuttering from exertion, breath heaving in his lungs, and waits for the pressure in his head to pass.  When it does, he crosses back to the spot where he had sat that night weeks ago and lowers himself into it, sitting cross-legged on the edge of the roof and overlooking the haphazard cluster of trees a little ways back.

 

Time slips away from him.

 

He watches the sun shoulder its way higher and higher into the sky, its hues warming from pale steel to buttery yellow, and tries not to think about Dean. He loses himself in the sights and sounds and smells of the early morning, the crisp sweetness of the air and the way the sunlight gilds the pines. Its brightness still hurts to look at, still pierces him as if each ray were a spear, honed and precise.

 

Meditation is harder as a human; he finds himself thinking of the nausea roiling in his stomach, the hardness of the roof beneath his legs. The way he woke with Dean’s head in his lap, and for a moment, was content.

 

From the corner of his eye, Castiel sees blue jeans and bare feet. Dean lowers himself to sit beside him, grunting as he folds himself into position. He’s close, but not in the same way as last night.

 

There’s only a foot or so of empty space between them, but it feels like an abyss.

 

He says nothing. Castiel doesn’t acknowledge his presence, instead squinting at the sharpness of the horizon, but the whole while, he is acutely aware of Dean’s proximity. With each moment that ticks by, it buzzes louder and louder until he can no longer ignore it—he looks over.

 

Dean is already watching him.

 

Sleep is still heavy on his face; it drags him down, pulls at his eyelids until they droop, presses at the low bunch of his shoulders. There are red lines on his cheek—the imprint of the couch where his face has mashed into it, Castiel thinks—and his hair is flattened on one side. He is still wearing last night’s clothes, and sharp lines and creases have been pressed into his flannel, his black t-shirt.

 

It feels intimate to see him like this, as though this is a side of him normally hidden from the world. Castiel feels a voyeur—it’s as though he is seeing Dean unclothed. In a way, he supposes he is.

 

The silence swells with everything they do not say. Dean’s gaze is wary, calculating—it holds none of the easiness of last night.

 

Castiel supposes he has ruined that.

 

Shamefully, part of him wants desperately to snatch it back, to gather it close to his chest and carve it a home there. To relax into Dean’s touch, to permit his kisses. That is the part of him he smothers, burying it deep inside himself so that it does not see the light of day. It is because he desires this that he fights it; he cannot allow himself to break again.

 

He looks away.

 

Dean’s gaze is hot on him still, searing into his flesh. Castiel clenches his jaw and stares harder at the trees, trying to pick out individual pine needles from the mass of green his eyes cannot individualize.

 

“Hey.” Dean’s voice is roughened with sleep, its edges jagged and irregular. “You doing okay?”

 

_No_. “I’m fine.” In the open air, his words sharpen. Their edges are blunt, their force substantial.

 

Dean is quiet in their wake. Castiel hopes he will let the issue die here, to dissipate in the morning air, but he is not so lucky.

 

“Yeah? ‘Cause it sure doesn’t look like it.” There’s a forced levity to his tone, like a child thrusting a broken kite into the sky in the hope that it will soar. It has him clenching his jaw. _I don’t want to talk about it._ But to release those words into the space between them would be to admit that something is bothering him, that there is this thing burrowing under his skin, a parasite seeking its perfect host.

 

“Feelin’ that whiskey, huh? I know I am. Been a hell of a long time since a hangover’s hit me this hard, I’ll tell ya.” Once again, Dean tries to cut the tension between them with empty words, with sounds that seek to open a way to easiness, but it isn’t that simple. It never will be. “The worst is the headache. Feels like someone’s making scrambled eggs in my skull. You gotta be feeling it too; I don’t know how you’re staring at the sun like that, seriously, I don’t.”

 

Castiel interjects before Dean can allow anything else to pour out, irritation urging him to prove Dean wrong. “I’m fine,” he lies, his tone granting no room for argument.

 

Dean drops the pretense of humor. His levity hardens into something bitter. “Okay, then what is it?”

 

“I said I’m fine, Dean,” Castiel snaps. His patience for this conversation has long since evaporated, and anger (at Dean, at himself, at his lot) has turned him brittle.

 

Dean is silent for a moment.

 

“Cas,” he says finally. Castiel doesn’t look over. “Castiel,” Dean tries again, and there’s an insistence in his voice that Castiel cannot resist. “Look, I’m not gonna lie, I don’t really know where we stand anymore, but, uh... You know you can talk to me, right? I mean, I’m not— I get it, okay? I’m like, the poster child for unhealthy coping. But…” He blows out a breath and looks down for a moment. Castiel can read deep thought in the cut of his brow. “Just… you gotta talk to me. We can figure it out, whatever it is, but keepin’ it all to yourself is a surefire way to get yourself fifty shades of fucked up. Trust me. I know.”

 

Castiel’s stomach twists. It’s so _human_ —the need to parse emotion, to lighten a burden by speaking it aloud. He has felt before—love and power and righteous fury—and while angelicism lent a much broader and more consuming lens through which to perceive these emotions, there’s something humbling about feeling them as a human. They’re so focused, so intense. Each touch, each moment elicits a response, profound and consuming. It’s _infuriating._

 

“Thank you,” he forces himself to say, although the words are pressed flat by the clench of his jaw, “but I would prefer not to.”

 

“You gotta help me out here, Cas, because I’m just not getting it. I mean, last night was going great, right? And then I tried… and you… and now this morning is just…” He splays his hands inarticulately.

 

“Last night was overwhelming.” It’s as much of an olive branch as he can manage; a sliver of truth tossed out into the open. He does not intend to elucidate further.

 

Dean, though, is stubborn. “Overwhelming how?”

 

“I may not be an angel any longer, but I’m not a human, Dean.” Castiel casts a glance over at him, and his gaze lingers for a moment on the confusion he finds coating his face.

 

“What does that even mean?” Castiel looks away. He isn’t interested in spreading open the recesses of his mind for one man’s viewing pleasure. “No, seriously. ‘Cause I don’t get it.”

 

“I don’t need you to _get it_ ,” he snaps. He can feel Dean’s body tense. He sighs, contrite, and closes his eyes for a moment to better think—this is something he needs to do, now, as his mental capacity is pitiful compared to what it used to be, and it helps to block out extraneous stimuli. “It isn’t something that can be _got_ ,” he settles on, treading over the words like unsteady ground. He chances a look at Dean.

 

There is a crestfallen set to the lines of his face, a weary resignation settled over his shoulders. He rubs a hand over his mouth. “Okay. Just… if you change your mind…” He trails off and turns his attention to the horizon. Castiel follows his gaze.

 

It’s better, he thinks, that this happens now. Dean has helped him a great deal, but he should know not to expect too much. Castiel is not some bird to be mended and kept. He will not live his life in a cage—his feral nature will not recede into domesticity after a single show of kindness. He is not here to provide companionship to his savior; he is here to heal, and nothing more.

 

The urge to escape is upon him again; he came up here in search of peace, meditation, a balm for his claustrophobia. He wanted to soothe his thoughts, and instead, Dean has riled them; his thoughts swirl in eddies around the confines of his mind, battering themselves so violently against his skull he fears they might break free.

 

But he cannot continue to run from that which incites him. After all, he will be faced with emotions like these for the remainder of his shortened life—he cannot expect to evade them. He may not be prepared to talk, but he can at least consider.

 

Castiel breathes deep. He stays next to Dean, and together they watch the morning grow to day.  
  



	4. Part III

_“Please,” he begs, scrabbling for purchase. He finds none. “Please, don’t do this. You can’t—”_

 

_There are hands on his wings—wrenching, ripping, shoving in through muscle and bone to dig sharp talons into his Grace, dragging it out the holes they’ve made in his back._

 

_He’s falling. He’s_ falling _, he’s—_

 

Castiel jolts awake.

 

It takes a moment to shed the nightmare, and though he has grown accustomed to this lingering fear and disorientation, it hasn’t lost its power. He kicks at the blanket tangled in his legs and squints against the light that pours in from the window, hot and glaring; the exact time is unclear, but it’s late—that much he knows. There’s a thin sheen of sweat beading on his forehead, and he wipes at it with the back of his hand. His heart is still pounding a furious rhythm in his chest, adrenaline a tight ball in the back of his throat, and he wills himself to calm.

 

It isn’t that easy.

 

His stomach churns, either from the heat or the dream or some unpleasant combination of the two. He pushes himself up and swings his legs over the edge of the couch, taking a moment to steady himself before hurrying into the kitchenette. He sticks his face under the sink and drinks directly from the tap. The water pours out cool over his mouth and chin; he drinks deeply, then splashes his face.

 

These past weeks have been difficult; he has been sleeping more, lacking the energy or desire to do much more than watch television or flip through the books on the shelf, and that means more nightmares. He can barely close his eyes without reliving the fall, and that coupled with the newfound tension blossoming between him and Dean has made for a taxing number of days.

 

Things have been awkward between them lately. Ever since _Star Wars_ , there has been an ungainliness to their encounters, a mutual acknowledgment that things are no longer the same, and a mutual agreement to avoid addressing it. They have tiptoed around one another—there have been no more movie nights, no more burgers or popcorn or whiskey. Dean stocked the freezer with frozen meals, and they eat Hungry Man dinners in uncertain silence during rounds of _Jeopardy!_ , hide their faces in bowls of Cheerios during breakfast.

 

Dean had made tacos one night—ground beef seasoned with something from a yellow packet, pre-shredded lettuce, hard corn shells—but he didn’t ask Castiel for help, and Castiel didn’t offer. They give each other space; Dean has been going out more often, to the grocery store or bar or seeing friends. Sometimes he leaves Castiel a note, or mentions his destination in an off-hand comment, but sometimes he simply goes.

 

He has begun hunting again, too. A case came up not far from here, according to Dean at least, and he jumped at the opportunity, clomping out of the house with several duffel bags and a _Don’t wait up_.

 

He’d been gone for four days.

 

Castiel worried for him, and with no means of communication, he had no option but to wait. When Dean had finally returned, he was dirty and bruised, blood caked underneath his fingernails and staining the side of his face. Castiel tried to ask about the case, to ensure that Dean wasn’t injured beyond these few superficial scrapes, but he’d waved him off. _Just a salt and burn, Cas,_ he’d said, and _I’m beat_. He’d gone into his bedroom, and they’d said nothing more about it.

 

Just one more casualty of this new tension between them.

 

Castiel doesn’t mind. He misses their conversations, but he tells himself that it’s better this way.

 

He hadn’t realized how easy it was between them until it wasn’t anymore.

 

His thoughts are shattered by screams from the audience of the talk show playing on the television. Castiel allows his eyes to wander to it; he’s familiar with this particular series, in which various men and women attempt to claim (or disclaim) their parenthood of respective offspring. Castiel finds it excessive, but he cannot deny the insight it gives to the human psyche. Or certain human psyches, at least. In this episode, it appears the man has emerged victorious; the woman is hiding her head in her hands while he celebrates, fist thrown high into the air.

 

Ludicrously—blasphemously—Castiel imagines God on this television show, facing down the host of his orphaned children. _You are the father!_ the man would say, and the entire host of Heaven would descend upon him, ants swarming over a single crumb.

 

Dean chooses that moment to appear.

 

He steps awkwardly into the kitchenette, hands stuffed into the pockets of his jeans. Castiel blinks away his sacrilege and looks over at him where he hovers in the doorway to the utility room, as though there is some unseen impediment keeping him from stepping over the threshold.

 

Castiel thinks of Dean standing beside him at the sink, Dean’s hands gentle on his bandages, and wonders at how quickly they have fallen apart.

 

“Uh, hey.” He glances at Castiel, and then down at the floor, scratching at the back of his neck with one hand. “I was just thinking—looks like it’s a nice day out. You wanna… go for a walk? Or something?” He ends the question with a wince and shifts his weight.

 

Has he been in the bedroom all day? The thought rises to the surface of Castiel’s mind; he supposes Dean might’ve gone in and out while he was asleep, although there’s no way to really know. Even if he hasn’t been in and out and has only gleaned the weather from his bedroom window, Dean’s right; it does appear to be nice outside, and they could both stand to get away from the house for a bit. Even with the windows open, the air in here is stale, aged.

 

“Might help to get your strength up,” Dean continues. He steps into the kitchenette and leans against the counter—there is something forced about his nonchalance. “I mean, you haven’t really gotten any exercise since… It’ll be a change of scenery, at least. I know _I’m_ gettin’ bored, staring at the same shit day in and day out.”

 

“Alright.”

 

Dean seems startled. “Wait… really?” When Castiel says nothing, Dean’s mouth turns up in a small but genuine smile. “Awesome. Hang on; I’ll grab you some shoes.” He pushes off the counter and heads back toward his end of the house.

 

When he reemerges, he’s holding white socks and a weathered pair of sneakers. “Here. These should fit; think you’re probably the same size I am, maybe a little smaller.”

 

He passes them over and Castiel takes them. Dean’s right; they do fit, more or less. His feet slide a bit inside them, but if he ties the laces tight, they stay on without much trouble.

 

Once he’s finished, Dean leads the way to the door, turning back to talk to Castiel over his shoulder. “There aren’t really any hiking trails or anything ‘round here but there’s plenty of space.”

 

Castiel follows Dean into the living room and out the door. They make their way to the dirt road and walk in the grass along its side. It is a beautiful day—the sun is warm on his body, and the air is fresh. There’s a gentle breeze that picks up now and then, bringing with it an invigorating coolness. It plucks at his hoodie, pushing it out to flap behind him, and runs fingers through his hair; Castiel thinks of the way the wind used to play at his feathers, the cool touch of it on his face in flight.

 

The silence that had been awkward between them settles into something comfortable, as though with each step, they are putting the tension farther behind them. They are stepping into a new plane, a place where things are easy between them once again.

 

Castiel isn’t sure how much time has passed when Dean finally speaks.

 

“So I was thinking of making meatloaf for dinner,” he says. He keeps his focus trained ahead, but Castiel can feel his desire to look over, as though he is resisting some unseen magnetic pull. He is silent for several more strides; it feels as though he is waiting for something. Castiel doesn’t know what.

 

“You’re, uh. Probably getting tired of those frozen dinners,” he says when the pause stretches on, and this time he does sneak a look to the side. There’s something unsure about it, something soft and tentative. “Plus, I hustled good money outta some guy playin’ pool at the bar the other night.”

 

“That’s—”

 

“Immoral, yeah, I know.” Dean kicks at a rock; one side of his mouth is twisted up in a small smile. “But hey, a guy’s gotta make a living.”

 

There are numerous other ways to do so, Castiel thinks, but he says nothing.

 

“Anyway, I, um. I was kinda hoping you’d wanna help? You can try your hand at mashed potatoes. Heh, you don’t need to be Iron Chef Morimoto to cut potatoes into chunks.”

 

Castiel frowns, attempting to make sense of the name, and more than that, of this entire conversation. He has a feeling that Dean is speaking in layers—that his words can be peeled back to reveal an entirely different meaning lurking just beneath the surface. It’s evident in the forced levity of Dean’s voice, the way he does not look at Castiel except in quick, nervous glances.

 

There’s an entire conversation he is meant to participate in but does not understand.

 

Dean puts a hand on Castiel’s arm and slows to a stop. Castiel follows his lead, frowning, but when he meets Dean’s gaze, he finds that all pretense of nonchalance has evaporated from his face. Something flips in his stomach.

 

“Look, Cas, I’m, um.” He looks uncomfortable, his gaze dancing here and away again, and a muscle jumps in his jaw. “I’m sorry. About the other night. I mean, I still don’t really know what went wrong, but, uh… I had too much to drink, and I shouldn’t’ve let you drink so much, too, and, uh.” He huffs a breathless laugh, but Castiel gets the feeling it’s born more out of discomfort or anxiety than humor. “I’m sorry for, um. Trying to… I just— I just thought…” Dean looks down at his feet. Castiel watches him swallow, watches his lips turn down in a minuscule frown. When he looks up, he seems set. Determined. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter what I thought. Obviously whatever I did wasn’t cool, so… I’m sorry.”

 

He’s not sure how to respond. What is there to say? That for a moment, Dean had allowed him to forget that this life was meant to be exile, that he had shown him how to fit humanity over his skin and feel comfortable inside it, and that Castiel resented him for it? That he doesn’t know how to be human without throwing away the thing that he used to be?

 

“I’d, um. I was kinda hoping you’d have something to say,” Dean huffs out a forced laugh, the quirk of his lips a little awkward. “Like _it’s okay,_ maybe?” He watches Castiel, expectation and hope sewn equally into his expression. “These past few days have been kinda shitty… It’d be aces to get back to how things were, you know?”

 

He does. He has felt it, too, every word between them falling thick and ungainly, every look unsure, every movement stiff. It isn’t fair to blame Dean for all of it; this is as much Castiel’s fault as his.

 

“It’s all right,” he says finally, and Dean deflates, the tension in his body seeping out like water wrung from a sponge. “I apologize for the way I reacted.” This is how it works, he knows: it’s a give-and-take. Together they will shoulder the burden, will maybe even carve something beautiful out of it. “I’ve been unfair to you.”

 

Logically, Castiel knows that what he says is true. He has been unjust, has blamed Dean for shoving his fate under a spotlight and forcing him to face it, when Dean has done nothing but help him. Dean did not make him fall, no matter what Castiel sees when he looks at him. He will be more careful now, he resolves. That’s all. He will not forget himself.

 

At his side, Dean shrugs. “Hey, we all fuck up sometimes. It’s cool. I know you’re, uh. Dealin’ with some shit, so.” His face breaks into a tentative smile. “We good?”

 

Castiel considers. He nods, solemn. “We are good.”

 

For some reason, this stretches Dean’s smile wider, pulls a chuckle from the depths of his chest. He shakes his head. “Man, you’re somethin’ else, you know that?”

 

“I believe you’ve said as much, once or twice.”

 

They begin to walk again, falling back into an easy rhythm. Their feet _shush_ against the grass like a metronome, the sound punctuated by the high twitter of some bird in the distance. Castiel feels the urge to speak bubbling up inside him.

 

“Perhaps we could continue watching _Star Wars_ ,” he suggests, although he isn’t sure how much of the latter two movies he actually retained. “Or the _Space Ball_ you suggested.”

 

“ _Spaceballs_ ,” Dean corrects with a grin. “Yeah, okay. We can definitely do that.”

 

It occurs to Castiel that over the course of their walk, they have drifted closer and closer together. He can pick out the bit of brown in Dean’s eyes, the stubble peppering his jaw. His arm brushes against Dean’s with every step; he feels the contact resound through his body at each touch. They haven’t been in such proximity since that night—by some unspoken agreement, they have been buffering each interaction with several feet of dead space, as though distance will ease the discomfort between them.

 

It makes this closeness a stark contrast, something he can’t help but fixate on.

 

He examines how the sun lends buttery warmth to Dean’s skin, how it shines over the green in his eyes, draws out his freckles. He studies the soft lines of his face, the openness with which he stares back at Castiel.

 

His gaze drifts down to the pink bow of Dean’s lips. They look soft and marginally chapped, and Castiel is seized by the sudden urge to taste them, to lean in and feel the press of them against his own.

 

He freezes.

 

He comes back to himself.

 

Dean is watching him, wide-eyed. His lips are parted, his expression open and unsure. Castiel realizes he has begun to lean in, like a flower turning its face to the sun, and he pulls himself back, unnerved. Dean says nothing. He swallows, and turns his attention to the wide spread of land before them.

 

Castiel follows his example. He pulls away so that his arm no longer brushes against Dean’s, and they continue their walk in silence.

 

 

Things have begun to settle recently, like an earthquake giving way to stillness. Since the walk, there has been a tentative return to normality; Dean doesn’t avoid him anymore, doesn’t spend his days holed up in his bedroom, doesn’t find excuses to leave early and stay out late. And Castiel has warmed, too. Now that he has had time to parse his reactions, to put himself back in order, he no longer feels as great a need to push Dean away.

 

He allows Dean to change his bandages, to make small talk about the weather, or _Jeopardy!_ , or explain the tricks to scrambling eggs as he does so in the early morning. It’s nice to have someone here with him, to have company over breakfast and on walks in the morning when the grass is frosted with dew.

 

They haven’t quite returned to their former ease; there’s still a hesitancy to their interactions, a tentativeness that comes from not knowing exactly where one stands, but it’s getting better.

 

It’s a poor consolation prize for what he had before, one human in exchange for the Host of Heaven, but Castiel is learning humility.

 

He’s also been feeling better physically, at least. His back still aches and likely will for a long time, but painkillers make it manageable. He’s tired all the time, but he’s beginning to learn his limits. He is growing stronger, too—human musculature requires a great deal more maintenance than he had expected.

 

Coupled with all this, though, comes a sense of wrongness. It coats him in a thin film, like a layer of dirt and oil he can’t seem to shed. He is trying to be content with this, but his loss is still a boulder on his chest. He can’t help but compare every moment of this life with what it used to be, can’t help lingering on the billions of years he had spent as a warrior of God. Castiel’s grief is like a toothache, and he cannot stop worrying it.

 

And then there’s Dean.

 

Dean, about whom Castiel cannot stop thinking. He is second only to Heaven in Castiel’s mind, occupying whatever space is left over after the fall.

 

He has a way of putting Castiel at ease, with his constant stream of consciousness, his jokes (although they are, Castiel will admit, occasionally distasteful), his kindness, his concern. Castiel has grown fond of him during his time here, has come to tentatively see him as a friend, an ally. What little he knows of Dean speaks volumes, and although the past seems to be an issue neither of them is eager to discuss, Castiel thinks he can color the blanks in with broad strokes, can extract the essence of Dean’s character from the little things he lets drop. The way his face melts when he talks about his brother, the careful way he has learned to live, the scars that pepper the flesh of his arms, his neck.

 

Castiel admires him; he is a testament to the righteousness of humanity, its perseverance, its strength. His brothers had thought earth beyond saving, that nothing abided here but sorrow and death, but Dean is evidence of the contrary—that despite the hardships, despite the struggles, beauty and love can still bloom.

 

He’s drawn to him in a more physical way, too. Castiel finds himself staring, eyes caught on Dean’s smile, the crinkle of his eyes, the curve of his mouth. One morning, he had meant to go to the bathroom to brush his teeth, but when he turned into the utility room, Dean was already there, emerging from the shower with nothing but a towel slung low on his waist. Castiel had stopped dead in his tracks, had been unable to keep his eyes from searching the expanse of bared skin, the shift of muscle as Dean tensed.

 

The image is seared into his mind.

 

As though summoned by the intensity of Castiel’s thoughts, Dean enters through the front door. He stiffens and twists guiltily toward the noise, feeling caught although technically, he has done nothing wrong. Dean doesn’t seem to notice; a smile stretches wide on his face. There’s a plastic bag in one hand and two long, flat boxes shoved under his other arm.

 

“Hey, Cas,” he greets, shouldering the door closed behind him and laying his spoils on the breakfast bar in the corner. “How’s it goin’?”

 

“Fine.”

 

“Just fine, huh?” He peels off his heavy leather jacket and lays it over the back of the wooden chair, pushes the sleeves of his flannel up to expose several long inches of forearm. “Well, you’re in luck, because I got just the thing to turn that frown upside down!”

 

Castiel wasn’t frowning before, but he is now. He’s not sure what Dean is referring to—a glance at the breakfast bar doesn’t give much away. There’s only one bag, so it likely isn’t another meal. The two boxes are stacked on top of each other; they’re a little beat up, but Castiel can read _SORRY!_ emblazoned across the bottom one. The top one, adorned with cartoon mice and depictions of various nets and cages, reads _MOUSE TRAP._ Actually, the “A” is replaced by a trap of that shape, but the intention appears to be fairly obvious.

 

As he’s attempting to make sense of this, Dean reaches into the plastic bag. He makes a show of unveiling two clear plastic containers and sets them reverently on the countertop. “We,” he says with no small measure of drama, “are having game night. And _pie.”_ He pats the containers fondly, and they creak under the touch. “This here’s good ol’ cherry, and I also got the flavor _day joor—_ pecan.”

 

His eyebrows raise in wordless prompt; from the self-satisfaction and excitement on his face, Castiel supposes he expects this proclamation to be met with an equal measure of enthusiasm. When he doesn’t respond, Dean’s features twist incredulously. “Dude! Come on, gimme at least a little credit here; game night is a classic! Used to be a Winchester family staple. Well, for me, Mom, and Sam, at least. Dad never really got into it. But seriously, this is just what you need. You’re gonna love it.”

 

Castiel isn’t so sure. Hot on the heels of his contemplation of humanity and his slow absorption into it, this seems just as mundane as movie night or family dinner. He isn’t sure whether he’s ready to shoulder another stereotypical facet of human living, not when those he has tried on so far have caused him such distress and discomfort.

 

And this feels like more than that. With each new ritual, Dean initiates him further into his life. Now, Castiel will be playing the role of a Winchester. He has eaten Winchester food, has watched Winchester films, has heard Winchester stories and jokes, and now he is to partake in Winchester games. Not for the first time, Castiel wonders just what kind of void Dean means him to fill, and whether he will truly mend it or if he is simply the first suitable patch to come along.

 

“Quit thinking so hard!” Dean has ventured into the kitchen to pull out plates and forks and knives, as though this decision has already been made. “Seriously, you’re gonna give yourself an aneurysm.”

 

Castiel levels Dean with a glare. In response, Dean leans his forearms on the counter and raises his eyebrows.

 

“Y’know what I think?” He asks, and he speaks as though letting Castiel in on a secret. “I think you’re scared. _You_ think you’re gonna lose, and you don’t wanna take the chance.”

 

“That’s ridiculous,” Castiel says, because it is. He doesn’t care whether Dean proves to be superior at _Mouse Trap_ or _Sorry,_ although he doubts he will. But Dean doesn’t let up.

 

“Yeah, you are. You can’t even think about one puny human beating your ass.”

 

“I am not.”

 

“Then prove it!”

 

In retrospect, as they’re sitting on the floor in front of the coffee table, _Mouse Trap_ laid carefully over its surface, Dean’s taunting was clearly meant to bait him. But he is in this now, too far immersed to withdraw at this point.

 

“This was always my favorite,” Dean admits as he fiddles with one of the cages. He’s very precise, his gaze intent on the bright plastic pieces, his touch light and careful. “Sammy always liked _Scrabble_ and chess and other nerdy shit like that, ‘cause he could always whoop our asses at it.” He leans back, satisfied, and turns his proud attention on Castiel. “But me? I’m the _Mouse Trap_ king.”

 

“That remains to be seen.”

 

“Oh yeah?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Big talk for someone who didn’t see the point. _Real mice don’t act like that, Dean_ ,” he imitates. “ _They’re highly intelligent—”_

 

“They are,” Castiel interjects. “It’s a flaw in the game’s design. And I don’t sound like that.”

 

“It ain’t made to be realistic, Cas, it’s made to be fun.”

 

“It’s distracting.”

 

“Oh?” Dean has an insufferable grin on his face. He speaks around a forkful of pie, which is squirreled away visibly inside his cheek. “That why you ain’t doin’ so hot?”

 

“I’m… _getting the hang of it._ ”

 

“Sure you are, buddy. Keep telling yourself that.”

 

“I am.” Castiel feels his brow pulling down into an irritated furrow. He stabs at his slice of pie, and the fork makes a satisfying _clank_ against his dish. “This is nothing compared to the plans I laid on the battlefield,” he grouses. There is a small part of him that bristles at his incompetence here, when he has shown himself to excel at much higher things. “I’ve laid traps for thousands of demons. That, at least, was intuitive.”

 

“Okay, hotshot, we get it. You’re a big deal.” Dean is still grinning, but there’s something else stirring behind his eyes. Interest, Castiel thinks. He doesn’t speak often of his past, each tidbit of history a revelation for this boy, who until several weeks ago had thought angels no more than legend.

 

“I was, actually. After Anna fell, I took over command of the garrison.”

 

“Well I’ll be damned. And here I thought you were just a grunt.” His words are light, but Castiel thinks he detects a note of respect lurking beneath. Or perhaps it is just wishful thinking.

 

“As I have told you, I’m a warrior.”

 

“Uh, yeah, you made that pretty clear the night you almost took my head off.”

 

“In that case, I don’t know why you seem so surprised.” Castiel makes his move. From Dean’s look, it wasn’t a good one. He narrows his eyes, attempting to locate his error.

 

“I dunno, man, just seems pretty cool, you being head honcho and all. I mean, not only are you a badass warrior… angel… _thing_ , you’ve got your own garrison? Sounds like a big deal.” Dean captures one of Castiel’s mice. Frustration stabs just behind his eye.

 

“It was.” And now here he is, unable to grasp the stratagem of a _toy_ comprised of plastic and cardboard. He scowls. “I don’t like this game.”

 

“Yeah, I’m sure you don’t.” Dean is smug, but he refrains from gloating, perhaps sensing Castiel’s inner turmoil. He is grateful; there are other ways he can demonstrate his prowess, and none of them bode well for Dean. “How ‘bout we try something else? Wanna set up _Sorry_?”

 

“Alright.” He doesn’t feel particularly enthusiastic about continuing on with these games, but Dean is quick to break down this one and set up the next.

 

Castiel is better at this one. He falls into it easier, with familiarity tickling at the back of his mind. He has seen this somewhere, he thinks, although he can’t seem to figure out where. Teasing facts from his subconscious is much more difficult now than it used to be; all the knowledge he amassed used to be there, just waiting to be summoned. Now, he has to work for it.

 

“You’re lookin’ pretty confident over there,” Dean says as Castiel boots one of his pawns back to _Start_.

 

An image flashes in his mind—cowrie shells and dice, a board in the shape of a cross. India.

 

“I’ve played this before,” he says, speaking both to Dean and himself, more a vocalization of thought than anything. “Or, uh… a game with similar mechanics. Pachisi, I believe it was called.” The memories crawl back to him as though summoned by his stilted words—each sentence brings back another image, another tidbit of information. “It was a cross and circle board game which originated in medieval India.” And then, “Its name derives from the Hindi word for ‘twenty-five,’ which I think was the highest score that could be thrown,” more to prove to himself that he still remembers than out of any desire to impress Dean.

 

Castiel looks up at him all the same and finds him grinning, rolling his eyes in exaggerated annoyance. “Okay, Einstein,” he says, drawing a card and nudging one of his pawns along the colored spaces on the board. “Got any other trivia you wanna share with the class?”

 

Castiel arches an eyebrow. “Not at the moment, but should I think of something I’ll be sure to let you know.”

 

For a while, Castiel maintains his lead, blessed by a combination of lucky draws and excellent strategy.

 

It doesn’t last very long.

 

Dean begins to come back, a fact which Castiel determinedly attributes to his cards rather than his skill, but whatever the reason, the fact remains that more and more of Castiel’s pawns are being booted back, and Dean is pulling steadily ahead.

 

“Not doin’ so hot anymore, are you?” he teases as he plunks one of Castiel’s plastic pieces back on the _Start_. “Thought you’ve been playin’ this game since medieval times; what gives?”

 

Castiel scowls, but he can’t seem to muster any real heat. “It’s a game of luck,” he says, and it comes out more like whining than he would like, but he can’t take it back now. “And I said it originated in medieval India, not that I’ve been playing it since then.”

 

“Sure it is,” Dean replies, tone saccharine and mollifying. His brow is furrowed in the most obviously insincere imitation of placation that Castiel has ever seen. “Tell yourself whatever you have to, buddy, I won’t judge.”

 

“It is!” he insists, but he’s unable to keep the scowl screwed on his face; in its place, a grin is poking through. His eyes crinkle with it.

 

They go on like that for a while, trading jabs and jokes and the occasional anecdote. Dean tells him how one night, when Sam had managed to beat Dean at both _Scrabble_ and _Mouse Trap_ , Dean had been so angry he’d flipped the board over, scattering plastic across the living room, and wrestled his brother into submission. He talks about how they could never do anything without it being a competition: who was stronger, who was faster, who could knock more tin cans off the old fencepost in the backyard? Dean tells him about the prank wars they used to have, plastic spoons shoved in mouths and hands dipped in water to stimulate urination. He says it all with a nostalgic gleam in his eyes, a vibrance Castiel has come to recognize as reserved solely for Sam.

 

It makes him think of his own brothers.

 

Slowly, like drawing a bucket of water from a deep-sunk well, Castiel reaches down into his chest and pulls his memories of Gabriel out to sit in the open air. He speaks of his brother’s sense of humor, odd for an angel, and especially for one of his status, of his fondness for chocolate and female companionship. Dean listens, enraptured, and doesn’t interrupt except to laugh at appropriate times, or nod, or smile.

 

He finds himself talking of Anael, too. It is as though once he has started this stream of words, he cannot stop them—stories come pouring out of him like water too long held back by an ill-formed dam. He tells Dean about her rich red hair, her surprising level of vanity, her interest in human fashion. He tells him how she shared his view of humanity, how she too came to love them and appreciate them and view them in a way the rest of the Host could only fear and disapprove of.

 

He realizes that at some point, between luring plastic mice with cheese and maneuvering brightly colored pawns around a cardboard track, his worries have slipped away. He is laughing, and joking, and talking about his siblings in a way that feels more _memoriam_ than _elogium_. The knowledge bubbles in him, heady and warm.

 

He marvels at how Dean, with bare hands, manages to spin the thread of Castiel’s greatest sorrows into a cloth fit for a king.

 

Dean beats him at _Sorry_ , in the end, but Castiel can scrounge up no more righteous indignation. He plays at frustration, but for the first time, the emotion sits ungainly over him, falsified and awkward. “You cheated,” he tries, but there is a smile curling under his words that undercuts his efforts at anger. Dean is grinning back at him, all childish joy and youthful exuberance.

 

“No way! I won fair and square, man; you’re full of shit!”

 

Castiel insists, declares Dean a swindler, demands a rematch. He challenges Dean to _Scrabble_ , to chess—something in which he can demonstrate his true prowess, something requiring skill over chance. Dean tells him he’s a sore loser, shoves his arm in a move that feels more an excuse to touch than anything, tells Castiel his ass can’t stand another whooping tonight.

 

Castiel claims that Dean’s success tonight has been pure luck, that he did not win so much as Castiel has lost. “Besides,” he says, “you possessed an unfair advantage. It’s my understanding that you grew up with these games.”

 

“Oh, no, no, no! Nuh-uh!” Dean fires back, grinning wide. “What happened to _pet-cheesy_?”

 

“Pachisi,” Castiel corrects automatically.

 

“Whatever. Besides, you ever heard of beginner’s luck? Common sense says you shoulda creamed me.”

 

“Common sense can _bite me_ ,” he says, borrowing a phrase he’s heard over and over in Dean’s mouth.

 

“Oh? Is that so.”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Really?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Huh.” Dean has gravitated closer to him, or he has gravitated closer to Dean—does it matter? All Castiel knows is that they are on the same side of the coffee table, backed up against the front of the couch, so close that their arms bump with every movement. The grin is softening on Dean’s face; he feels his own doing the same, melting to something gentler, something more tender. Dean’s eyes flicker down to his mouth, and Castiel watches him swallow once.

 

Drunk on the sight, he feels himself close the distance between them and press his lips to Dean’s.

 

He freezes.

 

The contact pulses through every inch of his body. He can hear his heartbeat thudding in his ears, can nearly feel the rush of blood through every artery. Dean’s lips ignite something inside him, and he stays there, mouth pressed against Dean’s, as he tries to sort out the flood of conflicting urges inside him.

 

He wants to press in harder.

 

He wants to pull away.

 

He doesn’t know what he wants.

 

His muscles are coiled tight in some parody of fight-or-flight—humans have never been particularly good at reserving adrenaline for truly threatening occasions, although a part of Castiel can’t deny that this application seems accurate. Deserving.

 

He’s not sure what to do. His body yearns to pull Dean close, every inch of his skin screaming for contact, but his mind is whirling, catching on movie night and their almost-kiss. The morning after, which had tainted the memory stark and cold.

 

Dean brings a hand up to cup Castiel’s cheek, gentle and reassuring, and he is lost.

 

His muscles unlock and he melts into the kiss; with a heavy exhale, he expels his misgivings and offers himself over entirely to this. It’s chaste at first, just a dry press of lips on lips, a soft drag of their mouths.

 

It’s electric.

 

Castiel is no stranger to intimacy—he has watched humans for millennia, has seen them touch and kiss and fornicate. He has even been kissed himself once, by a demon who tasted of sulfur and ash, whose hands were rough and ungentle. Her aim, though, had been to distract, not to entice—it was nothing like this.

 

Each touch has him spiraling higher and higher, each caress of Dean’s lips has sparks bursting like pinpoints behind his closed eyes. Once again, he sees the value of the sum over the parts; it doesn’t matter if he can sense Dean’s body temperature, count the hairs above his lip, hear the rush of blood through his veins. This is _more_ —this is intoxicating.

 

Dean swipes a tongue across the seam of Castiel’s lips, his thumb brushing reverently over his cheekbone, and Castiel parts for him instinctively. He groans at the first feel of Dean’s tongue against his, hot and invigorating. Dean kisses him hard, and their mouths slide wetly against each other, filling the room with soft, slick noises that have heat curling low in Castiel’s belly.

 

He’s unable to devote much thought to anything other than the movement of their mouths and the places where their bodies touch, consumed by the responses they’re coaxing out of him. Each spike of arousal is foreign, each flutter in his stomach new and unexpected. But he is not the only one breathing heavy; Dean exhales hot puffs of air against Castiel’s cheek, raising gooseflesh on the back of his neck, across his arms. He presses himself harder against Castiel, deepens the kiss further, captures Castiel’s lip between his teeth and worries it. Castiel’s breath stutters at that, and Dean takes notice. He kisses at the hinge of Castiel’s jaw, at the sensitive flesh of his neck.

 

His hands begin to roam, broad sweeps of heat and electricity that Castiel feels sear into his flesh through his clothing. Dean drags his palms over Castiel’s shoulders, his chest, kneads small circles into his waist.

 

It isn’t long before they’re both panting. Castiel can feel himself growing hard, boxers becoming tight, and the urge to touch has become a growling thing inside him. He breaks the kiss; Dean stares back at him, dark-eyed and breathless. Something thrums unspoken between them, and then Dean is fisting a hand in Castiel’s shirt, putting another under his arm and hauling him onto the couch.

 

He crawls onto Castiel’s lap, and their groins come together in unexpectedly gratifying pressure. Castiel bucks into it, startled by the depth of arousal evoked by so slight a touch. He makes a low noise in his throat and Dean chuckles, circling his hips down as he swipes a hand through Castiel’s hair.

 

“You like that, Cas?” he murmurs, filthy and low, and Castiel’s hands fly to Dean’s hips, urging him to grind down harder.

 

Dean does. Castiel’s head jerks back, falling against the couch as he works up a steady rhythm. His hands dig hard into Dean’s hips, a pathetic noise forming in the back of his throat. He is overwhelmed already, heat rising like a flood in his abdomen—he needs more.

 

“Dean,” he says, and it comes out strangled, caught in some purgatory between profanity and supplication. Dean moves his hips again, and they come together in a new angle that leaves Castiel breathless. “I— _oh_.”

 

“ _Fuck,_ Cas,” Dean pants. “You’re gonna be the death of me, _god_.” He leans down and recaptures Castiel’s mouth, and his hands begin to roam. They trace Castiel’s shoulders, run down the front of his chest. When they skate down toward his waistband, Castiel strains up seeking Dean’s touch, but Dean only smiles into his mouth and slides his palms upward again. Castiel exhales hard through his nose in impatience.

 

Arousal is an ache inside him; it gnaws at his stomach, leaves him lightheaded and desperate. Strange, how so many tiny stimuli can coalesce into something all-encompassing. He doesn’t know what his pulse is, can’t smell the adrenaline permeating the air, but he _wants_. Every nerve in his body is screaming for Dean, every inch of his skin yearning for his hands, his mouth, his touch.  And in some ways, it’s no lesser an understanding of his current state than what he might have perceived before his fall. In fact, the argument can be made for the opposite.

 

Dean breaks the kiss, pressing his face against the top of Castiel’s head and burying his lips in his hair. Impatient, Castiel grinds up into his ass.

 

“Dean—”

 

“Someone’s greedy.” He scowls. Dean pulls back and runs a thumb over Castiel’s lip in placation, a confident smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “I’m gonna take care of you, Cas, don’t worry.”

 

Dean’s hands slip under the edges of his hoodie, peeling it back and down off his shoulders. He helps, pulling his arms out, and Dean discards it somewhere to the side. His flannel follows, wadded into a tight ball and tossed to the floor. His fingers lift at the hem of Castiel’s shirt, playing over the flesh of his stomach, and he allows Dean to pull it off, to mouth at the newly-exposed flesh.

 

Castiel’s hand flies to Dean’s hair, and he fists it there, fingers seeking purchase in his short tresses. Dean kisses his way down Castiel’s chest, and each spot he touches tingles in his absence.

 

By the time Dean reaches his sweatpants, Castiel is so hard he’s leaking.

 

Dean’s fingers play at the waistband, and he looks up. When their eyes meet, anything Castiel might have had the mind to say is chased away by the intensity of his gaze. He nods once, a small, jerky movement that’s all he can manage, and then Dean is pulling his sweatpants and boxers down his thighs, to his ankles. He pulls his own shirt off while Castiel kicks them off, sheds his jeans and settles himself once again between Castiel’s legs.

 

At the first touch of Dean’s fingers, he is lost.

 

Dean fists him loosely, and Castiel’s breath stutters in his chest. His hips punch up, chasing Dean’s hand, and then Dean is bending low, kissing at the inside of his thigh. “You ever had someone suck you off?” he asks, voice low and rumbling. Castiel’s chest itches in sympathy, and then Dean mouths at the thatch of curls at the base of his cock, and he can’t think of anything else.

 

“No. Dean, I—” he wants Dean to touch him, but his mouth will not form the words. Some part of him is holding back, keeping him from prostrating himself before Dean, from begging for his hand and his mouth and more—for whatever Dean will deign to give him.

 

He is not so lowly, yet.

 

Dean’s breath ghosts over the head of Castiel’s cock; it twitches in anticipation, and he feels another thick pearl of precome bead at the tip. He can feel the promise of wet heat in his teeth—he is hungry for it. When Dean licks a stripe up his shaft, Castiel’s hips jerk up hard, and he grabs at Dean’s shoulders. His fingers dig into Dean’s flesh, seeking a tether.

 

“Dean,” he warns. His voice is deep but thin, worn down by the need writhing inside him.

 

Dean looks up, catching his gaze, and swallows him down.

 

The sensation is indescribable. Castiel makes an embarrassing noise; his fingers spasm on Dean’s shoulders. His hips rock subtly, matching the bob of Dean’s head, and he marvels at how obscene Dean’s lips look stretched around his cock.

 

Dean’s mouth is hot, his movements imperfect, but he is confident and enthusiastic, and Castiel can’t tell the difference. He stifles a groan, hands jumping to tug at Dean’s hair—it pulls a moan from him, and the vibrations have Castiel curling his toes against the carpet.

 

The room is full of the slick sounds Dean’s mouth, of both their heavy breathing. Dean reaches a hand down between his own legs, palming at his cock through his boxers, and quickens his pace, mouth and hand sliding fast and wet. Castiel is too consumed by his own pleasure to pay much attention to Dean, too busy thrusting up into the hot suction of Dean’s mouth.

 

This has been building in him since the night Dean first tried to kiss him, and the reality far surpasses anything he could have imagined. He feels desperate, chasing some elusive release he has never experienced—Dean is going to take him there.

 

He’s moving enthusiastically, fist working the base of Castiel’s cock, one shoulder juddering minutely with whatever he is doing between his own two legs.

 

Dean moans unrestrainedly, swallows around him, traces the vein on the underside of his shaft with his tongue, and Castiel is gone.

 

His body locks up, eyes screwing shut, fingers spasming in Dean’s hair. “Oh! Dean—”

 

Castiel’s hips jerk up and he comes hard, mouth dropping open in wordless ecstasy. Dean chokes and pulls off, spluttering, but jerks him through it, hand pumping until the sensation turns just the wrong side of painful. Castiel pushes him off with a wince. His nerve endings are overstimulated now, overwhelmed by the intensity of feeling.

 

He just sits there for a moment, breathing hard, head lolling against the back of the couch. At his feet, Dean is making soft, punched-out noises—Castiel can hear the slick slide of his hand over his cock, speeding and speeding until he presses his face into Castiel’s thigh and tenses. Dean groans as he climaxes, and Castiel can feel the reverberations of his release as it echoes in the muscles of his own body.

 

Slowly, his endorphins begin to sputter and fade. Dean comes up to sit beside him—he’s wearing his boxers, Castiel notices, although he isn’t sure whether they’ve been on the whole time or whether Dean has just put them on again—and nuzzles into Castiel’s side, dropping his head to Castiel’s shoulder.

 

“Holy shit,” Dean says into the silence. His skin is warm, and his muscles feel lax. He is sated, Castiel thinks. Untroubled.

 

But as Castiel’s pleasure recedes, he does not find himself calm and languid. Instead, something cold and sharp is crystallizing in his chest. Much as Dean’s hand had been more pain than pleasure at the end, the weight of Dean’s body against his side is quickly shifting from comforting to suffocating.

 

“Worth the wait, huh?” Dean presses a kiss to his shoulder, and Castiel feels himself tense. His body is stiffening again; some indescribable wrongness is crawling beneath his skin.

 

What was he thinking?

 

The thought washes over him, hot then cold then hot again, prickling up his spine, shooting down to his toes. _What was he thinking?_

 

Dean is speaking, he thinks distantly, a low rumble of words that Castiel cannot make out over the rushing in his ears, the loud beat of his heart. Kissing Dean—touching Dean—had felt so right, so natural. It draws shame like poison from his chest.

 

After movie night, he should know better. He should understand that any relief he seeks in humanity is merely temporary; daylight always sees it encased in regret, mortification.

 

He is a fool. Was this supposed to make him feel better? Did he expect to touch Dean and be healed, to drown out his distress with pleasures of the flesh and emerge changed?

 

He wanted Dean. He _has_ wanted Dean; this is something he knows. It has been growing slowly, a sapling fed water and sunlight and attention until it takes root deep beneath the soil.

 

Castiel wants to rip it out with his bare hands.

 

He feels sick.

 

“What’s wrong?”

 

The words come to him from a distance, filtering through his panic to settle on his shoulders like snow. Castiel looks over and sees that Dean is frowning, that he has retracted his head and is sitting upright, expression wary but concerned.

 

“Cas?”

 

This was a mistake. He says it. The words rise like bile inside him and spill unbidden from his mouth: “That was a mistake.” Once he is rid of them, he cannot regret them.

 

They feel better out in the open.

 

“...What?”

 

“That was a mistake,” Castiel repeats. He feared his voice might waver, but his words come out cool and crisp, detached in a way he hadn’t thought possible. It’s at odds with the sandstorm of emotion in his chest. “That was— We shouldn’t have— I don’t know what I was thinking.”

 

“Seriously?” Dean has pulled away, shifted so that the line of their bodies does not touch.

 

The absence is a relief.

 

“Yes, seriously,” Castiel snaps. He realizes that his hands are trembling and curls them into fists on his thighs. “I— I can’t—”

 

“Jesus. _Fuck_.” Dean exhales hard and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Okay, okay,” he says, and he pushes a hand through his hair as irritation spasms on his face.

 

He blows out another hard breath. “Shit,” he mutters. Castiel feels his gaze on him, notes the furrow in his brow with detached interest. “Just… calm down, Cas, okay? You gotta… you gotta breathe, man.”

 

Now that he mentions it, Castiel _is_ finding it somewhat difficult to breathe. There is an iron fist clamped around his lungs; he attempts to circumvent it with smaller, faster breaths, but then he cannot seem to stop.

 

Dean’s hand comes to rest on his shoulder; Castiel flinches, shrugging it off sharply. “ _Don’t—_ ” he spits, ignoring the way Dean recoils with hurt. “Don’t tell me to _calm down_.”

 

Anger has sunk its hooks into him—it draws him higher, higher.

 

He feels out of control.

 

He jerks forward, reaching down for his pants and boxers and yanking them back up over his hips. His fingers are shaking; it takes him several tries to get them to lay right. He feels dirty—corrupted.

 

Animalistic.

 

A far cry from the being of light and purity he used to be.

 

“Cas,” Dean tries again. Castiel can hear the desperation in his voice, the pleading. He’s gotten better at recognizing emotion on bodies instead of souls. “Seriously, man, what the hell happened? What are you so wrapped up about?”

 

“What am I—” he breaks off to breathe in shakily through his nose, trying to collect some semblance of stability. “In case you forgot, I’m an angel, Dean. I should not be surrendering to pleasures of the flesh, I’m—”

 

Shame is a beast within him. It rears its ugly head and, disgraced, impels Castiel to cast the blame onto someone other than himself.

 

“You corrupted me,” he says, voice shaking. “You— You _tempted_ me, you—”

 

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, hang on a sec!” There’s real anger glittering behind Dean’s eyes now. “I did _not_ — You— If I’ve ‘tempted’ you, you’ve ‘tempted’ me too, you friggin’ hypocrite!”

 

“No, this is your doing.” There’s part of him that knows he’s being unfair, that’s screaming at him to stop—lying is another sin, after all, as are wrath and lust and pride, but it seems that tonight Castiel is racking them up like tally marks. “You— You lured me in, you…” He’s not making any sense, words spilling out of his lips before the thoughts have fully coalesced. “This is your fault.”

 

Dean’s laughter is hard and incredulous. There is no warmth to it. Something cold spikes in Castiel’s gut. “You are so full of shit,” he says, shoving himself up off the couch and snatching his jeans off the floor. He redresses violently, stabbing his legs into his pants and yanking his shirt over his head so hard Castiel fears he might tear it. “You know that?” He glares at Castiel, and there is pain there too, and disbelief. “Okay, that first kiss? That’s on me. But I _apologized._ I backed off. And then _you_ started it all back up again. The— The eye-fucking, and the flirting, and—” Dean cuts himself off, pulling his flannel on. “No, you know what? I don’t have to take this bullshit. I’m going to bed. Have a good fucking night, Castiel.”

 

He leaves without another word, stomping through the kitchenette and disappearing into the utility room and, most likely, his bedroom. Castiel hears the door slam shut—the sound vibrates within him.

 

He’s shaking.

 

There’s a tightness in his chest that won’t go away, a lump in his throat that’s hard to breathe around. The wounds in his back ache from how taut he’s been pulling his muscles, and his head is beginning to throb.

 

Dean’s words are ringing in his ears. _You are so full of shit_ and _You’ve tempted me too, you fucking hypocrite!_

 

He’s right, Castiel thinks detachedly, folding over his knees to hold his head in his hands. This is his fault. This is his doing. He harbors as much of the blame as Dean does; he is not innocent in this, or in anything.

 

Ever since he has fallen, he has taken every piece of hope, every sliver of kindness that Dean has given him and dashed it to pieces, has ground it into dust so fine that no hope remains of making it whole again.

 

He can’t do this.

 

He has known for some time now that he is ill-suited toward humanity, but it is only now, with the ruins of board games strewn across the coffee table and the phantom of Dean’s heat at his side, that he realizes just how badly he has failed. He is incapable of living like this, of reconciling the divine with the mundane.

 

He is sick of trying. Sick of failing.

 

He wishes Dean had never found him in that field.

 

He wishes he hadn’t survived the fall at all.

 

The thought comes to him in a sickening twist, grabs at his stomach with greasy hands, but Castiel can’t make himself rescind it. It would be so much _easier_ if he had just died—he wouldn’t have to deal with his ceaseless mistakes, wouldn’t have to feel these emotions or fight against these urges.

 

There would have been no gray, no in between—no half-life. Like a star, he would have shone and then faded; he wouldn’t have landed on earth like a smoking mass of metals, the charred remnants of some meteorite supposed to make itself whole again.

 

He would have been an angel, and then he would have been nothing.

 

 

He is on the roof.

 

Castiel isn’t sure how he came to be here; the passage of time between sitting on the couch with his head and his hands and re-emerging here, above it all, is murky at best. His thoughts are liquid, elusive.

 

It’s better up here, albeit marginally. It’s easier to breathe. Freer. He feels closer to God, if only by fifteen feet. Closer to home.

 

He throbs with longing. He wants to be back there, tries to herd his thoughts into greener pastures.

 

_Paradise_ , he urges himself to think. _Joshua, and the garden, and the butterflies and the grassy yard with the kite._

 

But thoughts of Heaven slip from between his fingers, oil-slick and fleeting.

 

His thoughts keep spiraling back to his shortcomings, to all the ways this existence has exhausted him, even in the short span of time he has been condemned to it.

 

He thinks of Dean. He’s the drain at the bottom of a sink and Castiel is the water, swirling around and around yet never able to evade him. Dean’s hurt expression keeps flashing in his brain, intermingled with the memory of his hand on Castiel’s shoulder, Dean’s lips wrapped around his cock, Dean’s easy grin in the early morning.

 

Castiel’s hands fist in his unruly hair. He tugs, as though he can yank his faults from his body like weeds.

 

There was a time when used to excel, to thrive. He made mistakes, but never like this. Everything he does now is wrong, every step false. Every choice buries him deeper and deeper in this earthen grave—he wonders how long it will be until he is asphyxiated. And will it not be easier, then?

 

After all, what does he even have to lose?

 

Aches. Pains. Two wounds on his back, slowly knitting themselves into scars. Grief. Loss. Memories of what he was, what he knew, all seeping slowly out from him, like blood from an open wound. Some borrowed clothes.

 

Dean.

 

But even that’s not true. Not anymore, at least. He doesn’t have Dean; he’s made sure of it. He chased him away with violence and bitterness, beat him back when he proved he could show Castiel anything akin to happiness. That, as Dean would say, is on him.

 

The thought occurs to him again that not only is he human—he’s a poor excuse for one. He’s terrible at it, although that much he expected. He’s awkward, unskilled, and unwilling to learn. He is rude and uncaring and selfish, and even then he cannot seem to flourish. Humanity sits clumsily over him, like an ill-fitting suit.

 

Was this the point? To bring him so low that he cannot even manage to thrive as a human? Is this why he was cast out from Heaven instead of killed? Michael knew that death would be too lenient—he wanted to humble him, to grind his face in the dirt and show him what a disgrace he truly is.

 

If so, he has succeeded. Castiel has proved him right.

 

He looks down.

 

He has gravitated toward the edge of the roof, he realizes. He’s standing where he has sat with Dean so many times, staring up at the stars, the horizon, the swollen sun. He peers over the edge of the roof, down at the browning grass below. He contemplates.

 

It’s not that far, really.

 

Castiel reaches inside himself for his Grace, prodding at the rent edges of his internal wounds. He still feels it there, the smoldering embers of his power. They’ve begun to cool. Panic seizes in his stomach.

 

Standing here, staring down at the earth below him, a thought begins to crystallize within his veins. It’s easy and natural, and his body sings with it, each molecule of his being.

 

It would be a way to see just how much Grace is left within him. A final test.

 

It most likely wouldn’t be fatal anyway, not from this height.

 

And if it is?

 

What does it matter? Hasn’t he already decided that, if anything, it would be a relief?

 

He thinks he’d like to fly, just one more time.

 

Castiel closes his eyes. He steps to the edge, and he lets himself fall.

 

 

When he wakes, there are hands framing his face. They’re rough and calloused, and they’re jostling him gently.

 

“No, no, no, no, no,” someone is saying, panic laced through his voice. “Come on, Cas, you bastard, wake up! You gotta— You—” He breaks off on an inhale that wobbles with unshed tears.

 

Castiel opens his eyes.

 

Dean is half on top of him. His eyes are wild and red and clogged with tears.

 

It takes him a moment to remember: the board games, the intimacy, the shame.

 

The roof.

 

Dean’s hands tighten on Castiel’s cheeks, and then he’s leaning closer, as though that will help him understand. “C-Cas?”

 

Castiel grunts.

 

His head is throbbing, and his neck feels how it does when he sleeps on it wrong, only a thousand times worse. His back hurts too, sharp pains that shoot down from his spine and linger in the flesh over his wounds.

 

Well, he woke up. So he supposes that answers one question, at least.

 

“You’re okay, you’re— You—” Dean’s relief is quickly spiraling down into fury. “Jesus Christ, Cas! You can’t just— What the fuck _was_ that? I thought you were dead!” He pulls away to run a hand through his hair, tangles it in the short brown tresses on the way and tugs.

 

“Tell me you didn’t fucking jump.”

 

Castiel says nothing.

 

Dean rubs at his mouth and shakes his head. He can’t seem to find words. When he does, his gaze latches onto Castiel, hot with anger. “What the _fuck_ were you thinking? Did you seriously just— You’re one selfish son of a bitch, you know that?”

 

Dean’s voice is grating, and his head pounds with every growled word. He just wants Dean to be quiet, so he can attempt to sort this out. “Dean. Will you please shut up?”

 

Anger flashes in his eyes. “Fuck you, Cas,” he spits. Castiel notices that his hands are shaking. He doesn’t comment. “Seriously, fuck you. No, I’m not gonna shut up! This is fucked up! You can’t just _do_ shit like that, Jesus! You’re _human_ now, you asshole, you can _die_!”

 

“Yes, I’m aware.”

 

“Oh, you’re _aware_ , are you? Well that’s just fine and dandy. That’s even better, actually! Thank god you’re _aware_.”

 

“I don’t understand why it matters,” he grumbles. The words taste like cotton in his mouth. “It’s not as though you get a say in what I do with my life.”

 

“Excuse me?”

 

That’s not the end of it. Dean goes on, some rambling speech about _stupid fucking decisions_ and _Jesus Christ, it’s like talking to a toddler_ , but Castiel isn’t listening. He’s dwelling on the reality of them having this conversation, of the fact that him being aware right now means he survived. That either the human body is more resilient than he had supposed, that the fall was in fact too short to seriously hurt him, or that he did have enough Grace to remain… other.

 

There’s a slight tingling in his neck, his spine, an afterimage of heat and power. The zing of the air after a lightning strike.

 

To tell the truth, other than the exhilaration of being proved right, he’s not sure how he feels about this. Relief and disappointment are warring in his chest, along with several other things he doesn’t attempt to identify. His shame is still present, dry and thick in the back of his mouth, and he’s tired, overwhelmingly so.

 

He reaches for his Grace.

 

And finds nothing.

 

No embers, no smolder. Not even any ash. Actually, he can’t even pinpoint the place it used to live. It’s as though all evidence of it has been eradicated, as though there is no hole to fill.

 

Grief crashes through him in waves. That can’t be right—it saved him, he can nearly taste it, can almost smell it on the air. It’s the most he’s sensed it since his fall; hasn’t he kickstarted it, blown on the embers and coaxed a flame from the ashes? He didn’t expect it to return in full force, but he should be able to feel it now, even if as faintly as he did before.

 

But it’s like groping in the dark. He doesn’t find anything but emptiness—no handhold, no hint, no hidden current. It’s gone.

 

This is it—this is the end of his fall. There is nothing left to tether him to Heaven, nothing inside him which he can pinpoint as evidence that this is not where he belongs, that he was once a part of something greater. The bird inside his chest has died, and he is left with an empty cage.

 

There is no wondering now, no half-life. He is fully human.

 

“—even listening to me? Cas? _Cas_.” Dean’s words fall meaninglessly in front of him, and he lets them lie there in the grass.

 

He attempts to sit up.

 

Dean’s hand flutters to his chest, pressing him gently back down. It hearkens back to that first night in the field—Dean’s hands on his back, his shirt stained with blood. “Dude, no. You just fell off the fucking roof, okay? Hang on a sec.”

 

Castiel pushes his hand off with a scowl. Dean’s proximity and concern are quickly turning cumbersome; his mind and body are already overwhelmed with pain and conflict and emotion, and this additional input is too much.

 

“I’m fine,” he dismisses, voice like tires over glass. He struggles for another moment, determined to do this by himself. Dean watches for a moment, silent, then rolls his eyes and helps him come to sit; although reluctant, Castiel accepts the aid and they shuffle backward until his back is pressed against the dingy white siding of the house. It ignites the pain in his spine and he grimaces, leaning his head back against the wall just under the window and closing his eyes. He can feel Dean crouching beside him, tangled emotion radiating off his body like heat waves.

 

Silence grows between them. For a few moments, Castiel focuses on his breathing, on the steady beat of his heart.

 

“Are you all right?”

 

Castiel pries his eyes open and levels Dean with a look. It’s a stupid question—he hasn’t been _all right_ since before his fall, isn’t sure he ever will be again.

 

“God, fine, okay. You’re really a jerk, you know that?”

 

“Says the man berating someone he thought was dead,” Castiel responds blandly, raising his words as a shield. Dean is right, though—Castiel has shown him nothing more than his bitterness since he has come here, has drawn him close only to push him away again.

 

“Yeah, well, that was then and this is now.”

 

Castiel grunts.

 

He wonders where they’re supposed to go from here. Is he supposed to be healed? Should he be grateful that he has survived? Disappointed? After everything that’s happened, this moment feels somewhat anticlimactic. The sharp longing for respite is gone, but neither is he inspired to carry on, to seize his human life by the throat and take it, and his failings still rumble in his chest.

 

He guesses he spent all his energy on the panic which preceded his jump; everything now feels muted in comparison.

 

“Cas,” Dean says after another moment has passed. His voice cracks, and he clears his throat. “Cas, look, I’m… Whatever I did, I didn’t— I, uh, I know I haven’t been the most understanding, and I coulda taken it easier on you, I just… You just make it so hard, man. Whenever it seems like you’re gonna be okay, like you’re havin’ a good day, or— or a good night, you just… You destroy it. You’re allowed to be happy, Cas. I know this… this _human_ thing, you think it’s supposed to be punishment or whatever, but. You’re allowed to be happy.”

 

Castiel can’t deal with this. Not right now—not ever, actually.

 

“Dean,” he says, feeling his weariness acutely. He squeezes his eyes shut in a weak attempt to block it out. “Please—”

 

“No, okay, just— Just hear me out. You gotta get over this, man. You gotta talk with someone, or— or… I don’t know what. But you gotta stop bottling it up. We can work it out, okay? Yeah, being human sucks ass, but it ain’t so bad. I mean, god or whatever, he made us too, right? And far as I’ve heard, he don’t make mistakes.”

 

Castiel isn’t so sure. It’s a rousing speech, but he doesn’t know that there is anything worth fixing. And if there is, he isn’t sure it’s worth the effort, isn’t sure he even _can_. That’s not what he says, though.

 

“I didn’t try to kill myself.”

 

“I— What?”

 

“I didn’t try to kill myself,” Castiel repeats. He pries his eyes open to squint at Dean. “I was testing a theory.”

 

“Testing a— Okay, no, that’s even more fucked up, you know that?” Dean’s face is screwed up again, as though he can’t quite fathom what Castiel is trying to tell him. “The fuck kind of _theory_ involves you jumping off of a goddamn roof?”

 

“I was trying to get a handle on my Grace.”

 

“Excuse me?”

 

“My Grace,” Castiel repeats. “I wanted to see how much was left.”

 

“Oh, okay, yeah. So you just decided to _kill yourself_.”

 

Castiel decides to ignore him. “It worked, I think. I was correct—I did still harbor some of my Grace. But it doesn’t matter now. It’s… gone. All of it.”

 

Dean is quiet. Castiel looks away.

 

They coexist like that for some indeterminable length of time, the night stretching on heedless of their inactivity.

 

“I’m sorry.” Dean is, again, the first to throw words like darts into the air between them. “I really am. But… maybe that’s a good thing, Cas. You know? You’re… you’re really human now. No wings, no Grace. Kinda a fresh start.”

 

He recoils at first, but on the heels of his revulsion, he finds that there’s a truth to Dean’s words.

 

Oddly, they begin to coil warm in his stomach, bringing with them a kind of relief—a liberation, though it drips with sorrow and loss. He despises the fact that he is human, that he no longer has anything to show for what he was, but something about what Dean is saying feels… right. This is a fresh start. He is no longer torn between two worlds—he has fully fallen.

 

He thinks of Heaven, of his future on earth, and for the first time, it feels like a challenge. Maybe it’s spite, or bitterness, but hunched here, at the foot of a sad, dirty old excuse for a house, a flame is kindling inside him. He has something to prove.

 

He can either die, and give in to the agony his siblings intended for him, or he can live. It has never quite seemed so simple. And why not sin? Why not indulge? If he can eke any enjoyment out of this existence, wouldn’t that just be another twist of the knife? Thus far, he has accepted his exile as it was intended. Why not rebel again?

 

And yes, he is bad at it. He has thus far failed this test, and he has done so miserably. But that is at the base of humanity, isn’t it? Failure, repentance, resurrection. Human children, when learning to walk, never do so on the first try. They fall, they become bruised, they fail. And they get up and try again.

 

It will not be easy. But then, nothing that matters ever is.

 

He looks to Dean and finds green eyes already fixed on him. There’s a tentativeness gleaming in them which he didn’t notice before—or perhaps it has only just surfaced.

 

“I, um.” Dean rubs at the back of his neck. Clears his throat. “Look. This, uh. This ain’t easy for me, but…” He works his jaw. This is hard for him, Castiel recognizes. Dean is struggling too. “You’re kinda the best thing that’s happened to me in a long friggin’ time. Seriously. My life is a steaming pile of shit. I mean, I’ve lost… pretty much everyone. Sam, Mom, Dad… Ellen and Jo, Bobby… Pretty much the only thing that keeps me goin’ anymore is hunting. Just… tryin’ to gank as many evil sons of bitches as I can, tryin’ to keep this bullshit from happening to anyone else, you know?”

 

Castiel is quiet. He listens, and something like hope stutters in his chest.

 

“And then you came along, just fuckin’ fell outta the goddamn sky, and _wham_. I… I’m…” He bites his lip, looks away. “I can’t lose you, too. When I came out here and found you—” Dean’s voice breaks. Castiel watches a tear slip down his cheek, but Dean wipes at it angrily before it can fall. “I can’t— I just don’t wanna lose you, okay?”

 

He laughs, a self-deprecating sound made thick by his tears, and wipes his nose. “Look at me. Fuck. _No chick-flick moments_ , Jesus. I’m a fucking mess.”

 

“Dean.”

 

Dean doesn’t look up. Castiel’s heart is pounding in his chest. His mouth feels dry—shame still burrows like maggots into his gut at the thought of his humanity, at the pain and hurt he has wrought, but for the first time, he thinks he might be able to conquer this.

 

“ _Dean_.”

 

He reaches out a hand, lays it on Dean’s shoulder. Dean does look up then, and when their gazes connect, Castiel feels it in his bones.

 

He can do this. Dean has bared himself before Castiel, has laid himself open. He can grant him the same favor—he can at least try.

 

“I’m sorry, too.” The words are thick and awkward in his mouth, but he forces them out. “I didn’t, um. I thought I was doing the right thing, distancing myself from you. I wasn’t; I see that now. I hurt you, and for that I apologize. That was never my intention. Far from it, actually.” He pauses, unsure where to go from here. It’s… uncomfortable. Laying his feelings out in front of him, like wares to be perused. Like everything else he has undertaken since his fall, he expects it will take some getting used to.

 

“My behavior over the time I’ve been with you has been… reprehensible, at best.” His gaze flickers downward, focusing on the dying blades of grass curled limply between his legs. “This has all been extremely difficult for me,” he admits, pulling the words out of his chest before he can second guess himself. “And I haven’t coped well with— with falling. But I’m, um. I think— I would like to try.”

 

Dean is solemn, when Castiel looks up. He nods—a subtle, continuous motion—and rubs a hand over his mouth. “Yeah. I, uh. I know it has, Cas. It’s okay; I forgive you.”

 

The words lift a weight off his chest—he hadn’t known it was there, but its absence is a relief. Dean is no god, but Castiel has come to value his judgment all the same; perhaps he will be sent to Hell, when his time comes, but for now, he has been absolved. He has been given another chance, has found a purpose, and he will claw his way back to the light.

 

“What, um. What do we do now?”

 

Dean’s mouth quirks into a half smile. “We take it one day at a time.”

 

One day at a time.

 

He can do this, he tells himself. He may not be holy, or winged, or blessed, but he is alive. He has fought wars and conquered lands and led legions. He is strong, in this world and the next.

 

And he may be human, but he is not alone.

 

He has a shot at happiness.

 

And that will have to be enough.  
  



	5. Epilogue

“Hey, Cas, you wanna grab the blanket from the couch?”

 

Dean raises his voice to speak over the constant ricocheting bursts of popcorn in the microwave. He doesn’t look up from the counter, where he’s gathering several odds and ends (Castiel notes candy, silverware, pie) into a plastic grocery bag.

 

Castiel hums his agreement and crosses into the living room. “How much longer does the popcorn need?” he asks over his shoulder.

 

“Uhhh, ‘bout a minute.”

 

“Would you like me to take anything else?”

 

Dean considers. “Yeah, actually. You wanna grab the beers from the fridge? I got this stuff,” he gestures to the bag, “and the popcorn.”

 

“Don’t forget the licorice.”

 

That elicits a disgusted face. “You and that goddamn licorice, I swear.”

 

Castiel rolls his eyes but doesn’t comment. He knows that Dean doesn’t understand his affinity for black licorice, but neither does he understand the theory of particle acceleration, so Castiel has long since decided not to put too much stock in his opinion. He grabs the six-pack from the fridge, and once Dean has retrieved the steaming bag of popcorn from the microwave, follows him out the front door and onto the lawn.

 

They set their food and drink on the grass and spread the blanket out over the ground, even though the grass is green and dry, and neither of them much mind a little dirt. _It’s tradition,_ Dean had said. _Gotta have a blanket_.

 

“You sure you don’t wanna go up and watch it from the roof?”

 

Castiel shakes his head. “I’m alright down here.”

 

Dean shrugs, and they settle on the blanket, scattering their snacks around them. Castiel reaches for the licorice and tears the package open. Dean rolls his eyes and grabs a plastic container of pie. “I’m not kissin’ you if your mouth tastes like friggin’ anise,” he grouses as he shovels a forkful in his mouth, and Castiel gives him a long-suffering look.

 

“That’s fine,” he says. “Chew with your mouth closed.”

 

Dean doesn’t.

 

Castiel rolls his eyes, but he can’t suppress the small smile that forms on his lips.

 

“So, uh, what time’s this thing supposed to start?” Dean asks after a few more bites, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand and taking a swig of beer. Castiel glances up at the sky, leaning back on his hands.

 

“10pm to midnight is allegedly the best time for visibility.”

 

“Aces. Should be starting soon, then.”

 

Castiel hums.

 

There’s a thread of anticipation dragging under his skin. He hasn’t watched a meteor shower since the night on the roof.

 

He’s not sure how he will react.

 

“Hey, you sure this is okay on your back?”

 

Dean’s questions are bottomless this evening, but Castiel knows they’re born out of concern. He glances over. “I’m fine.”

 

“You sure?”

 

“ _Yes_ , Dean.”

 

“Alright, alright. Just makin’ sure.”

 

His back has mended now. Dean had taken the bandages off several weeks ago, proclaiming him fully healed. He’s still growing accustomed to the smooth flesh where once his wings were—every once in a while he’ll try to stretch them, to flap, to move in some kind of reaction or counterbalance, and the emptiness will crash over him.

 

He flexes his back.

 

Dean was wrong about the scars—some have formed, small but thick white lines like scratches down his back, where the meat of his body came together wrong. It’s tight and hard, but it doesn’t hurt. Castiel is glad for them. They’re a way to ground himself.

 

A reminder—of what he’s lost, but also what he has gained.

 

“There!”

 

Castiel surfaces from his thoughts to see Dean pointing at the sky; he looks up and finds a tiny strand of white dragging its way across the rich blue-black.

 

A familiar grief plunges cold hands into his stomach.

 

The loss and longing come as expected, roiling inside him like nausea. They rise in the back of his throat and burn there like bile.

 

He misses his family.

 

Dean is grinning. He has pushed himself back on his elbows, bent one leg at the knee to press the flat of his foot against the blanket. Castiel feels him turn his head and look over, feels the moment his attention shifts from awe to something softer, something more somber. He reaches over and takes Castiel’s hand in his own, saying nothing.

 

Castiel curls his fingers around Dean’s.

 

He thinks of his family, separated from him by space and time. He hopes they find peace.

 

“You okay?”

 

Castiel considers.

 

“I think so.”

 

Dean’s hand is warm in his. He squeezes gently.

 

It’s not perfect. It’s not even easy. There are still days when Castiel wishes he’d died in that field, that none of this had come to pass. But with each day, the ache feels a little less. They’re getting through it together.

 

And that’ll have to be enough. That’s _going_ _to_ be enough.

 

He leans over and captures Dean’s mouth in a kiss.  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, there it is! Thanks again to Bees for her incredible art and collaboration throughout, and thank you also to the amazing mods who made this whole process so fun and easy.
> 
> If you're interested, I did make a [Pintrest board](https://www.pinterest.com/ghstfcers/fic-the-art-of-falling/) for this fic.
> 
> Thanks so much for reading, and please don't forget to give [Bees' art](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19076581) some love!


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